A Certain Talented Hydromancer - The Short Stories
by sNovah
Summary: Beginning with Misaka Mikoto's staticky furst encounter with a feline of unusual size, these stories focus on Constance Battuta, the Hydromancer. Despite her initial appearances, she's not quite all she seems, least of all a "cool foreign beauty." Stories heavily center on her involvement with Academy City as a newcomer, and the girls of Tokiwadai Middle School.
1. Part 1 - Shorthair and Longhair

**A Furst Encounter of the Staticky Kind**

**Part 1 – Shorthair and Longhair**

At the end of Summer

"Have you seen the new student yet?"

"No, but I keep hearing really different things about her."

"It's really weird to get a transfer student into Academy City, isn't it?"

"Well I mean, Kongou-sama did it."

"Yeah, but she has connections. Plus, she just changed schools. She's not someone _completely_ new."

"Apparently she's really pretty."

"No, no, no, she's really princely!"

"?"

"I just know that there's already some fanclub starting up…"

"They already have pictures?! That's kind of sudden, isn't it?"

A sigh escaped Misaka Mikoto's lips. "How the hell do things get started this quickly?" She had to suspect it had to deal with the cloistered environment of the Garden. Even with access to the outside world not completely restricted, most of the girls who populated it rarely stepped outside their own circles and familiar environments.

So when something new happened, the rumors would take a life all their own, far beyond what one could normally expect from young women.

At times it was closer to being surrounded by particularly bored housewives.

Mere seconds after thinking that, at least one specific housewife living in Tokyo sneezed and glared in Academy City's direction.

"Then again, Kuroko ended up getting called over by Judgement…" Although, if she thought back on it, that was happening more often than it should have been.

But that was irrelevant for the moment. Mikoto had a far more urgent and pressing concern.

One that involved carefully opening a can of particularly pungent food in a quiet alleyway park.

"Now then, c'mere… c'mere… tk-tk-tk-tk-tk~"

She was using her most seductive tones, combined with clicking her tongue and waving her hand over the opened can, attempting to waft the scent towards the furry critters staring at her. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was deeply grateful Kuroko wasn't here to lecture her on wasting her time. Or record her.

"Reowr?"

At least one brave alleycat was willing to ignore the mewlings of his compatriots and started carefully approaching.

Mikoto knelt down, clicking her tongue and speaking as sweetly as humanly possible.

"Come on… Come here… c'mere kitty~… Almost there~…"

One meter… fifty centimeters… twenty…

The cat stopped like it had run into a wall. His green eyes went wide and he took a step back. A single, solitary paw moved forward, then pulled back. Forward… back… After a few moments, the cat looked like it was caught in a loop, or trying to imitate a particularly bad dubstep remix video.

"Please… pwease… pweeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase!" It was difficult to tell if Mikoto was still trying to lure him in with babytalk or was just crying.

The cat jumped back and sat down, staring at her, as if to say, _look, I tried. Just leave the food and get outta here._

"D-damn it…"

Misaka Mikoto, the #3 of Academy City's Level 5s, had received a great number of benefits from achieving that status. There were however, a number of detriments that came from it as well: it was almost impossible to be anonymous in some places, no shortage of fools would try to challenge her, or set her up to fight someone else, and she had to constantly leave school and use her valuable free time for specialized testing and analysis.

But if she had to pick anything to truly hate, it was that, as an Electromaster, she constantly emitted a weak electromagnetic field. She had enough control over it to avoid damaging electronics or making most people aware of it, but animals were particularly sensitive to it.

Which meant that, no matter how hard Mikoto tried over the years, she was doomed to defeat every time she tried to get near them.

"Gwah… oh… come on…"

She wasn't crying. This time. But it was a close call.

All she wanted was to play with one of the furry creatures for a little while during lunch, but they just couldn't get past the unease her EM field put them through.

This had become routine for her: even during summer vacation, she'd come to the same colonies of strays as she did during lunch while school was in session.

When she did this, she came fully loaded for bear: several cans of several _different_ brands of wet cat food, in a mix of flavors and styles; pouches full of catnip that would take serious explaining and create a minor scandal if she was seen with them without explanation; and a bag full of toys, dried treats, and various, cat-safe strings and scratching pads.

And all of that came to exactly naught.

"Reooooooowr? Mioayou!"

Intellectually, Misaka Mikoto was well aware that cats were not able to form distinct thoughts, much less articulate them. That meant, of course, that they weren't capable of real speech or insulting humans. She wasn't a psychometer either, but somehow she _knew_ _exactly_ what the adorable mewling noises meant: the colony's exasperation was crystal clear.

_Okay, gross! Time to book it lads._

_Why does this creep have to come over and ruin these snacks every day?_

"Raaaaaaaaaaagggggggh!"

Academy City's #3 Level 5 was on the verge of throwing a despair-filled tantrum.

"Meeeewl?"

It was a tiny, high-pitched, almost pitiable meowing, but it still caused Mikoto to jump in surprise. That same momentum carried and turned her around to see…

What seemed to be the _biggest_ cat she'd ever seen. Or a particularly fluffy dog with an unusually long tail.

"Is that… a Maine Coon? Or a Forest Cat?"

The "cat" in question was a black and silver tabby, with _brilliant_ green eyes. He (she was guessing) was also nearly the length of her upper body and was nearly as tall as her knees. If it wasn't for the whiskers and the distinct _floof_ of fur around his neck, she would've assumed his was some new kind of species created through genetic splicing: something between a mountain lion and a typical house cat.

That idea actually stuck in her mind despite the absurdity of it, which was an indication of how much stress she'd been under a short time ago. Just about anyone would likely feel the same after what she'd gone through.

She was well aware that, if someone in Academy City _really_ _wanted_ to play god with genetics, they certainly could.

"Meowr!"

The high-pitched cries the Maine Coon sent her way snapped her out of her fugue. That soft, kitten-like tone was alarmingly detached from its massive size.

"Um… are you talking to me?" Mikoto haltingly asked. The cat was less than a meter away, well within range of the electromagnetic field she generated, yet he sat there patiently, staring at her with shining, expectant eyes.

"Meowl!"

"Um… hmm." Mikoto slowly moved, bending down to grab the open can of food while keeping her eyes locked on the cat. The Coon returned her gaze, right until she started moving the can forward. Its green eyes immediately locked onto the food.

"(This is really weird)," she muttered. She moved the can forward a bit more and then: "Kyaaah!"

She hadn't even set the can down before the cat leapt forward. _That_ was so unprecedented and unexpected that it genuinely startled her, the can slipping from her grasp.

The can hadn't even hit the ground before the Coon started eating. She wasn't sure it was actually possible within the laws of physics, but she was certain she saw the cat _eating bits of meat out of the air_.

By the time the can had hit the ground, it rattled, nearly empty. A moment later, the cat looked up at her, a long tongue licking its lips and whiskers, meowed his thanks, and returned to the feast.

"…dawwwwwww."

Misaka Mikoto had absolutely no defense against this. Sure, the cat was massively oversized compared to what she was used to, but it was _almost within petting distance_. She couldn't remember the last time an animal had gotten that close to her.

_Well, other than that one _she _found and adopted._

But this wasn't a kitten that was helpless enough to get caught and forcibly acclimated to the electromagnetic waves she constantly radiated. She couldn't be certain, but Mikoto was quite sure that this cat was well into maturity.

Yet there it sat, grooming itself, one paw at a time, occasionally glancing back at her.

_Okay, hell with it. I'm going for it!_

She was psyching herself up as silently as possible. She began to edge towards the cat, a millimeter at a time, as if he was an ahistorical, prehistoric predator with motion-dependent vision.

Of course, he wasn't.

He was a cat, a predator that tended to be extremely sensitive to its surroundings. An owl might have a chance at sneaking up on one, but a middle school girl? In the broad daylight? While the cat was staring at her?

Not a snowball's chance in hell.

And yet, rather than flee, like she had grown to expect, her heart pounding, the cat just stared at her. Brilliant emerald eyes slowly opened and closed as his little ears twitched.

_The hell is wrong with you?_ he seemed to ask, lifting a leg to clean some more.

Strictly speaking, that wasn't "cute". Yet it still caused Mikoto's heart to melt—as well as the rictus grin she didn't realize she had slapped onto her face. With one last breath, she moved the last few centimeters, eyes clenched shut. She looked like someone in a school's "room of horrors", about to plunge her hand into bacteria-slathered pasta. Or, if it was Tokiwadai, actual amphibian brains.

Something warm was under her hand. Something soft, but still a little rough.

At this point, her mind was frozen and unable to process the possibility. It hadn't ever happened before. She'd had stuffed toys all her life, but she couldn't remember any time when any actual, living, furry critter had been willing to come near her. At least, not as far as kindergarten, when she had entered Academy City.

_Okay, okay, okay. It's probably my imagination. So I'm going to just open my eyes slowly…_

The moment she started to do so, she felt the warm, furry mass shift beneath her.

"Rowr?"

Her eyes popped open and she found the brown-and-silver cat rubbing his head against her hand, attempting to use her nails to scratch under his ears. She twitched her fingers slightly.

"Mrooow!" he responded happily. She felt a faint rumbling sensation accompanied by an unfamiliar sound.

_Is that…_

Her face dissolved into giggles and grins. A blush crawled across her cheeks and up her ears.

_He's purring! Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa~!_

She still had the presence of mind to only squeal internally, but aside from that, instinct was taking over.

Caution forgotten under her excitement, she moved her other hand and ran it down his back. The cat stretched and voiced his approval. After a moment, he sprawled across the warm ground and rolled over, leaving the pale-yellow fur of his belly exposed as his green eyes stared expectantly.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—"

What followed was largely unprintable, but not due to vulgarity or stern censorship laws. Some things are just too sweet, innocent, or delightful to sully by putting them to ink after the fact. If one were present at the time and making notes, a recording, they could at least be forgiven for wanting to eternalize the moment.

The time that middle school girl spent playing, chasing, petting, and feeding that unusual cat is one of those things, one of those moments in time that is all the sweeter for being left only to the memory of those who were there, or the imagination of those who were not.

Unfortunately for the middle school girl, she failed to realized that she and the cat were not the only ones making memories.

"Ah, so this is where you ran off to."

Mikoto halted like a car hitting a reinforced concrete bunker. After taking an anti-tank rocket. While filled with dynamite. With a world-ending asteroid making the flaming wreck its point of impact, wiping out all life on the planet.

The look on her face was identical to the driver of that spectacularly unfortunate car just as she realized what was about to happen.

Her head became so red that it almost looked like her skin might've vanished entirely.

"G-g-gu-g-gh-w-wh-w-a-ah—"

It was rather impressive that the brown-haired girl was able to make any sounds at all: an outside observer wouldn't have been unjustified in fearing that so much blood rushing into her head could have knocked her out.

"I was wondering where Leif had gone off to, but this is most unexpected."

The young woman had somehow found the little garden's alley entrance. Unlike Mikoto, she was immediately swarmed by cats who had been enviously watching the feast Leif—the Maine Coon—had for himself.

Some part of Mikoto's brain was still working, and struggling to restore the rest, like a sparkplug trying to stir an ancient engine into motion.

She was able to acknowledge that she was on her side, with an oversized cat wrapped around her arm chasing a fluffy toy, while an incredibly pretty young woman—maybe she was still a teenager—approached. Her vest and shirt were completely bunched up and even her skirt was disheveled, having turned into a toy for the cat at some point.

That cat had also seemingly ballooned up at some point thanks to the static electricity their antics had kicked up, but he seemed to be fine with that. It did result in him looking a bit like a fluffy pufferfish, however.

The stranger had boyishly short, black-brown hair that looked a little too neat to be bedhead, but couldn't have been any formal style; it was roughly shorn and almost spiky, as if it had just been cut recently. Her skin was paler than someone from East Asia, but more toned than a European's; that biological, shorted-out sparkplug in Mikoto's skull identified her as Middle Eastern, but that was as close as she could get. She would have neatly towered over Mikoto, even if the still-frozen girl had been standing.

Her attire, on the other hand, was definitely Western: she wore a pleated sea-blue skirt that was slightly longer than Tokiwadai's uniform skirt; while Mikoto wore loose shorts under hers, the stranger had tight, black leggings that went a few centimeters further than the hem. A green-and-blue flannel was wrapped around her waist. There were a few wires, pieces of paper, and small tools sticking out of it, so apparently she used it for storage.

"S-s-s-s-spats?" she observed with a sputter. Somehow, _that_ was the first thing to make the journey through her jammed brain.

"Hmm?" The girl looked down, as if forgetting what she wore. That brought Mikoto's attention to the girl's chest which was…

Well, _of course_ they were bigger.

The girl was wearing a white sleeveless shirt that hugged her curves perfectly: enough to accentuate them, but without being so tight as to leave nothing to the imagination. It resembled something a suburbanite American would wear to the gym, although it looked more alluring on her than it would on a middle-aged office worker.

Of course, the most prominent curves it accentuated were in front, which meant that the woman had to lean a bit to actually see her legs. They weren't especially large, but even that simple motion indicated that Mikoto had very much lost. It didn't help matters that the ensemble emphasized that the woman had developed just enough muscle in just the right places to look fit, but even managed to accentuate her femininity.

"Oh, these! Yes, they're sort of like spats. Technically I'd call them '_leggings_', but I reckon that's the common name in Japan?"

She had abruptly dropped in an English word there, along with something that was both archaic and rural. It was a startling contrast with her

That seemed to be enough to finally kick Mikoto's engine into restarting. She hastily stood up, causing Leif to make a discontented noise, while trying to adjust her own skirt.

"W-w-well, it's just what everyone calls them," she managed to stammered.

The girl—woman?—felt gigantic to the Asian middle schooler. She would have been tall in nearly every country: Mikoto guessed she was close to one-hundred-and-seventy-five centimeters.

"Yeah, I'm still trying to get used to some words being used differently than I'm used to. But that one seems to come up a _lot_ in, uh, _some_ media. But—oh, good grief. I'm sorry about that."

An irritated meowling prevented Mikoto from asking what she was apologizing for. Something warm and furry weaved around her legs. She looked down to see Leif slinking between her legs, staring up at her. _Come on, stop messing around! I wasn't done playing!_ Mikoto stared forlornly, her body shaking, fighting her desire to roll on the ground with him.

A shadow fell on her as the woman suddenly neared. She clicked her tongue and started running something over Mikoto's clothes, grabbing her shoulder and spinning her around. Her blush intensified at the overly-familiar woman's actions; the fact that she was courteous enough to rub softly over more _sensitive areas_ didn't help.

_Way too close!_

"Sheesh. Leif, you have plenty of chances to shed at home, why are you doing it now?"

Mikoto realized that she was running something like a lint roller over her clothes, although it was some sort of square patch instead of an actual roller. A moment after that, she finally noticed that she was _coated_ in fur.

"Oh!" The Railgun flinched as the woman suddenly jumped back. She grinned sheepishly and held out the cleaner. "I'm so sorry, I'm so used to having to clean after people, instinct just took over. I'm very, _very_ sorry." She even added in a belated, deep bow, while still holding out the adhesive square.

"Ah, um… no, no, you're, um." She wanted to say _fine_, but that much proximity to someone she didn't even know was more than a little alarming. It had also put the woman's chest very nearly into Mikoto's face. "It's alright, really!" she finally said, taking the cleaner.

_I kind of don't want to get rid of all this, but I feel like Kuroko will assume I was crawling after them in tears. Sigh…_

Her kouhai and roommate could be annoyingly perceptive at the worst times.

That it wouldn't be true _this time_ wouldn't help.

"(I was just trying to get closer to them... I thought they'd be comforted by me being smaller…)"

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, no-nothing!" Mikoto got to work trying to clean her uniform in earnest.

"Ah, shoot, I forgot to introduce myself." The woman straightened her shoulders, which made her seem even taller. "I'm Connie Battuta, on a self-guided tour. This here is Leif, short for Leif Erikson. Oh! For clarity's sake, Battuta is my family name."

"Misaka Mikoto," replied the middle school girl. She smiled nervously, then continued in perfect Pacific Northwestern English: "I managed to guess that, but good idea to be cautious."

"Oh, wow! Your accent is _excellent_." Connie's own English accent was probably Midwestern American, Mikoto thought, but she didn't know every North American dialect well enough to be certain. "Certainly better than my Japanese."

"I can understand you perfectly well, so I wouldn't get too worried about trying to sound native. At least, that's what every lecturer I've had says." Connie's Japanese had a distinct Kyoto accent, but she occasionally dropped in archaic or odd phrases that betrayed her unfamiliarity with the language.

"You've had more than one?" Connie was surprised, her eyes widening. Mikoto realized, for the first time, how brilliantly _blue_ her eyes were. She had no idea how she had failed to realize that they even seemed to _glow_ with a soft, warm light. "Misaka-san?" She repeated her question in Japanese.

Mikoto realized that she'd gotten caught up with the other girl's eyes. She shook her head to clear out the nonsense thoughts. _I felt like Kuroko for a moment there_. _Everything started turning pink…_

"Yes, a number of them. Even before Tokiwa—_dai?!_"

She let out a sudden, girlish squeal as she felt cool, soft, small little pads on her leg. She looked down to find Leif stretching up her leg, meowing continuously. _The hell?! Seriously, I'm right here, you jerk!_

"Ah-ha, he's angry that he's not the center of attention," Connie said with a smile. It was awkward, as if she wasn't used to making one, but endearing.

"W-what do I do?" Mikoto asked in a panic. This day just kept getting weirder, but unlike _some days of that summer_, it was only weird in good ways. Unfortunately, that just made her more paranoid. Having a small (well, compared to a human) adorable, furry creature be this friendly toward her was unprecedented in her fourteen years on the planet.

Connie gave her a concerned look. "Well, I can pull him off if you wa—"

"No! No, no! No-no-no-no!"

The American woman was taken aback by the sudden outburst. After a beat, she laughed and declared, "Well, then there's just one option left to us."

She moved swiftly, or maybe Mikoto just couldn't think straight enough to keep track of her. Connie took the cleaning patch back, pocketed it in the flannel around her waist, and picked up Leif. When she did so, Mikoto saw a quartet of blue wings woven into the back of her shirt, adding some flair to it.

The Maine Coon let out a long "_rowwwwwl!_" in protest. Before Mikoto could join her cries to his, Connie suddenly pushed him against the Asian's chest.

"Huh-wha?"

"Come on, support him! Make sure to have a hand or arm under his butt. Cats _are_ affected by gravity, after all."

Mikoto was trembling as she followed the instructions on how to properly hold a cat, something she'd long dreamed of but never managed to accomplish.

Once she was supporting Leif properly, the tabby stopped squirming and climbed up to almost be on her shoulder. He wrapped his body around it, looked around—his whiskers tickled Mikoto's ears—made an approving noise, and put his head down.

Her eyes went wide and a giddy, innocent, outrageously happy expression spread across her face. Leif was purring: a warm, rolling sound. Strangely, there seemed to be someone else purring as well. It couldn't have possibly been the girl holding him, however.

Utterly impossible.

Connie tilted her head—Mikoto wandered if she'd picked that up from anime—while wearing a gentle, if confused, smile.

"So, um, have you never had a pet before?"

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Alright, well, here we go! After way too much time spent nitpicking and editing bits of this, I've finally pushed it out.

Obviously, this is going to feature an original character. I have a fuller story arc planned out for her, but I'm more interested in using her to explore Tokiwadai and Academy City from a different perspective. At least, that's the plan.

This started out as part one (of three) short stories, so the other parts will be along fairly quickly, I hope. If you find any glaring mistakes that I missed (quite possible), let me know! Beyond that, feel free to leave a review with any other comments, questions, or thoughts.


	2. Part 2 - The New Girl

**Part 2 – The New Girl**

The (Not-So-Cool) Beauty from Abroad

"Well, it's not so much that," Mikoto answered reluctantly, taking the drink Connie offered.

They'd moved from the cat colony as the other residents had grown irritated with having people ignore them. Mikoto had been terrified to leave that now miraculous place, but Connie Battuta assured her that Leif was used to being ferried.

Given that the silver and brown tabby had not budged from his place on Mikoto's shoulder, it seemed true. Even as she'd taken position on a bench, he barely acknowledged it.

They'd ignored the confused looks and bewildered whispers of the residents of the School Garden. Not only were outsiders unusual in general, but Connie was so different, so striking, that she would draw attention anywhere. Usually.

This time, however, most of the stares were directed towards girl in a Tokiwadai uniform, covered in fur, and carrying around a tabby-colored mountain lion. Those looks had followed them to a park that was mostly deserted.

"(I wonder if Kongou-san gets those sort of looks, walking around with that snake.)"

"Hmm?"

"Oh, nothing!"

"So then, to reiterate my earlier query: you never had pets?"

Mikoto took a swig of something rather fruity. It wasn't necessarily her taste, but she'd left trying to figure out what was what to the visitor. It wasn't enough to complain over.

"Well, no," she admitted. "It wasn't for lack of wanting, though." Connie made a questioning noise and Mikoto finally accepted that, despite her age and touring the Garden, she still hadn't realized who Mikoto was. "I'm an Electromaster, so—"

"Oh!" Connie's sudden outburst caused Mikoto to jerk in surprise; Leif let out a tired, annoyed growl at having his bed move. "So you're constantly emitting a noticeable EM field, right? Well, enough to interfere with low-grade electrics and creatures with high EM sensitivity, which normally wouldn't matter… but because you're a human emitting a different field that's technically natural, a large swath of the animal kingdom detects it on a subconscious level. It would mean that they would try to avoid that source, since it likely acts like a sort of _noise_ in the brain, even though they can't—"

Mikoto stared at her as the previously cool, foreign beauty lit up like a spotlight with an old carbon arc lamp. As she started rattling off ideas so quickly that she fell back into English, she came to a complete halt. For the first time, Mikoto saw hints of red climb up along her olive-toned neck and cheeks.

"S-sorry… I get, um, a bit excited by things sometimes. Especially when it extrapolates on something I knew but never really considered before."

Mikoto laughed, finding the sudden change endearing. "It's fine, it's fine! Hehheh. I'm surprised you were able to put all that together so quickly, though." Her laugh turned bitter. "But yeah, that's why I've never had pets. I love animals, especially cats, but I'm not really able to get near them. This—" she indicated Leif, who was lightly snoring (even that was cute!) on her shoulder "—is something that I've _never_ had happen."

"Well, Leif is a very special kind of creature," Connie said with a mysterious tone. A little _too_ mysterious, since it made Mikoto roll her eyes obviously enough to make Connie sputter. "He is! A jealous, needy one though."

"I know the type," Mikoto sighed, thinking of someone with twintails. As if realizing he was being trash-talked, Leif suddenly woke up and jumped off Mikoto's shoulder. Before her frozen expression of shock melted into despair, he spread out on the bench next to her, using her hand as a pillow. A heavy sigh followed as he tried to get back to sleep.

_Oh, well… I guess that works. _She'd been ignoring the growing pain in her shoulder, but without the furry heatpack on it, it was a lot more obvious. She took the chance to stretch, careful not to move that hand.

"So," the middle school girl finally thought to ask, "why are you taking a tour here?"

She expected Connie, who seemed to be a young lady five or six years older than her, to be simply taking tours before enrolling in a university in the city. In fact, given how rapidly she'd rattled off what should've been _extremely_ specific knowledge, Mikoto wouldn't have been surprised to hear that she was looking at job offers.

"Oh, I'm looking at middle schools to transfer into."

"…"

"Hmm?"

"…"

"Misaka-san?"

There was a loud crack. Dimensions collided and fractured. The world opened up beneath her while the sky exploded with black, ragged lines and the world's atmosphere was ripped away, while bloody, fiery arms tore her flesh and dragged the bloody strings of her corpse down to hell.

"Misaka-san? Hello?"

How. How. _How how how how how how._

"Misaka-saaaaaaaaaaaaan? Leif, I might need your help here, buddy."

The girl before her was an absolute beauty. If that aggravating, conniving #5 she went to school with had the unnatural proportions of a supermodel, Connie had the gentle, realistic figure of an actress about to debut as a "girl next door character." She was absolutely beautiful, gorgeous even, but in a way that felt like she was someone you could meet on the street or who would move into the flat next to yours at any time.

"You know what to do, right? Wait, are you vaccinated?"

"Reowwwwr!" _I resent the implication! I am quite clean!_

Her face was distinctly feminine, but now that Mikoto looked more closely (albeit with glazed over eyes whose light was rapidly fading), her body motions were awkward and stiff, as if she'd had a sudden growth spurt. Her clothes weren't tight because she liked them that way: she'd grown so quickly and so recently that she hadn't been able to get them properly sized.

Speaking of tightness and sizes…

Mikoto's dead eyes drifted downwards, past a pale, shapeless mist that seemed to be trying to escape from her mouth.

"Oh dear, oh dear, is she having a seizure? No, wait, it can't be… you'd notice that, right?"

_That_ area.

_Those things._

She'd been fine with someone much older than her being comparatively blessed in that regard. Maybe Connie was still older than her, but nowhere near the half a decade she expected. But that wasn't what drew her notice and caused a spark of flame to ignite the deadwood that remained of her soul. Something resembling life returned to her eyes, although it seemed closer in nature to something from a horror movie.

Connie had recently had a growth spurt. A sudden, extreme one, that left her with clothes that _just_ managed to remain decent. It hadn't just been her height that had changed. Her chest had also benefited, perhaps enormously.

"Go for it."

Or at least enormously enough that—

"Kyaaaaaaaaaaaggggghh! Ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuch!"

A sharp pain tore through her arm. She leapt a solid two or three meters into the air, sparks flying from her bangs. Connie winced, first as blood dripped down, then again when Mikoto landed. More sparks flew around: several streetlamps flickered, the vending machine alarm squealed, and Leif looked extremely annoyed, red dripping from his fangs.

"Misaka-san, are you okay? I'm sorry, I couldn't think of anoth—"

"No bra!"

Connie stopped with her mouth open, her words dying in her throat. She blinked once. Twice.

"No bra!" Mikoto repeated, like a battlecry.

A third set of blinks. Confusion crawled across her face.

"What are you… huh?"

"You're not wearing a bra!" Enough of her brain's chemistry had recovered to actually make declarative sentences again.

"Well, no…? I don't like them."

"No bra—huh?"

"I don't like them," Connie explained patiently, in a tone that a doctor might use for someone suffering from a paranoid fit. "They're uncomfortable, they're rarely cute, and they're just annoying. Unless I'm exercising, or it's really hot out, then I'll wear a sports bra or something similar as a top. I mean, I didn't even need them at all until—"

"Temptress!"

"Misaka-san, I'm genuinely becoming concerned for your mental state."

"Harlot!"

"If this continues, I'm going to have to call someone… is it, uh, Anti-Skill? Or just emergency services…?"

"Coquette!"

"Wait, did we just drop into 19th century England? Misaka-san, come back!"

"Mata Har—"

"Misaka-san, if you finish that thought, I'm going to _throw_ Leif at your face."

"Meowrl?!" _Wait, what?_

That got her attention. Mikoto flinched like she'd been shocked. She swayed for a moment, then started blinking rapidly. Her head spun on a pivot and she ignored the sweat rolling down her face and stinging her eyes. It was like she had just snapped out of a fugue state. Or perhaps _berserkergang_.

Given that her brain had locked up on an illegal process, it may have been more accurate to say that she was rebooting.

"Wait, what's happening?" She sounded exhausted, her eyes scanning the area in a daze.

"That's really what I'd like to know," Connie responded, unamused. She'd realized at least one weakness (or rather, complex) of the girl before her, but she was going ignore it for the sake of Mikoto's health. "I told you I was looking for a middle school here, and then you left this plane of existence for a while."

"O-oh…" Her head was pounding like it was the morning after binge drinking (not that the middle schooler would know that). Bits and pieces of the last few minutes flashed through her mind, but were too flimsy to give her anything more than a vague idea that she'd done _something_. "Um, yeah."

"You okay? You need something more to drink?"

"N-no, Misaka is still functional, thank you for your concern."

_Misaka Mikoto OS has encountered critical system errors and will operate in debugging mode until normal operation can resume._

"Misaka was very taken aback. She was under the belief that you were quite older than her, and most likely a university student, or even a young faculty member. Misaka apologizes for her presumptuousness, and begs your forgiveness."

The look on Connie's face was more terrified than when Mikoto had been screaming Victorian Era accusations at her in the middle of the park. She grabbed Mikoto's shoulders, slapped her—which, as a note, is not standard procedure in these cases—and locked eyes with her.

"Misaka-san, are you really alright? Please, tell me you understand."

"H-huh? Y-y-yeah, I'm fine!" She shook all over, like a dog coming out of a river. When she came to again, Connie was tenderly wiping away sweat and had a cold bottle of water on the back of Mikoto's neck. It was an American response to someone running a fever or heatstroke, although Mikoto associated it with neck pain, which she had none of.

"Umm…"

"Are you back with us, Misaka-san?"

"Yes, I think so. I'm sorry about that. Maybe it was heatstroke?"

_Misaka Mikoto OS has recovered and has resumed normal operation. We thank you for your patience._

"Well, that's why we're here now." They were lounging under a tree, where it was a solid five or six degrees cooler. Mikoto had no idea how Connie had gotten her there or when.

The wind was a bit more active as well, which helped dramatically. Leif was further away, to Mikoto's disappointment, lounging in the sun. He wanted nothing to do with the human-shaped heater during her momentary insanity.

"So… you're really in middle school?" Misaka reluctantly asked. She was remembering more and more of what had just happened, although most of those memories were indecipherable.

Connie frowned, concerned at the return of the flush to Misaka's face. "Well, officially yes. Or rather, I will be," she answered cautiously. "But it's a technicality. I'm sixteen—" the number was an oversized arrow that violently tore through Mikoto's heart; _Only two years?!_ "—but there's some arguing over whether or not I even qualify as a middle school student here. I think it's politics, honestly, same as the argument over my level assessment."

Connie let out a long, sad sigh. It was so cold and forlorn that it finally managed to bring Mikoto back to her senses. Mostly.

"(I was really hoping to get away from this nonsense, damn it.) I haven't actually attended a certified school in, perhaps, a decade. So there's been a huge argument over if I should be placed based on my age or what education I was able to complete back home, or just be shoved into some university program."

Connie's manner and speech stiffened as she elaborated on her situation. It was so out of place that it helped drag Mikoto back to reality that much faster.

"What do you mean?" She couldn't ignore the mournful tone and distant look that settled into the foreigner's eyes.

And it wasn't just that the girl in front of her had an amazing cat. Not at all! That wasn't at all important!

Only 50% important. Maybe 70%.

She absolutely could not let the owner of that animal get away. But beyond that...

She couldn't even consider seeing someone making that face without trying to reach out.

"Oh. Yeah, I guess we haven't really swapped backgrounds, huh?" Connie laughed bitterly. "Well, it was nice while it lasted. Should have known better..."

"What do you mean?" she asked again, more forcefully.

"Having a friend. At least for a moment."

Mikoto stared, taken aback. Connie held up her hands.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm _friendly_ with a lot of people back in America. I had friends when I was really little. But when my powers manifested, being around people my age ended."

_Manifested? _Before Mikoto had a chance to ponder that, Connie continued.

"Once the Federal government realized something like me existed in the country, I basically got… abducted? Drafted? Enslaved? It depended on the administration and agency I was with, honestly. If it hadn't been for Aniki and the rest of my siblings, I don't know if I'd still be alive. Heh." There was no mirth to her laugh. "I mean, even with all their help, I still ended up partly vivisected at Nellis when I was nine."

That name didn't mean anything to Mikoto, but someone with a thirst for urban legends would have instantly recognized the implication. While not actually the same facility (at least officially), Nellis Air Force Base was commonly equated with Area 51.

The vast majority of claims about it were utterly false, of course. But it was still an extremely secretive, closely guarded facility, even by the standards of a military base of the world police.

That begged the question of why someone spoke about getting the same treatment there as little green men.

Mikoto was also unaware of a widely publicized incident at "Area 51" seven years earlier, involving massive military maneuvers and a complete information blackout. Given that Mikoto tended to ignore both urban legends and modern myths, it was no surprise that it failed to spark any realization for her.

"I mean, I get it. I didn't know it at the time, but Academy City existed back then, of course. They'd started proving that espers could be real about two decades ago, right?" Mikoto nodded, but Connie didn't seem to notice. It was like she was reciting a memorized speech. "So when they had someone like that just… _appear_, how could they ignore it? But they had no idea what they were doing or what they were looking for, much less how to improve my talent."

The American shook her head. "At least, after the Nellis incident, they stopped trying to keep me away from my family. It turned into too much of a threat to attempt. Heh. Aniki and Sena-nee started training me, and I got to have all the tech and toys and money I wanted when I started expressing an interest in science." She sighed. "I manufactured things at ten years' old that could change the world, and it _was dreadful._"

"Eh?"

She didn't mean to make a noise, much less question the girl in front of her. Her beautiful face had fallen, overcome with grief over a childhood lost. The smile that Connie responded with almost broke Mikoto's heart. She looked utterly defeated, yet there was a bit of pride in her voice as she continued.

"I started with things related to water. You know the Pseudoplastic Purifier?"

Momentarily startled at the change of tack, Mikoto tilted her head back to think. "Hmm. I think I do. Papa mentioned using a variant in Columbia once... It was a set of design prints that someone put on the Internet like, six years ago. It was a basically an instruction manual for how to create a self-powered, potable water filter with consumer parts and industrial by-products. It was even supposed to be able to be biodegradable if left unused. I _think_ it was a really big deal in polluted areas and countries, but nobody ever patented it, so it just got copied and adapted."

Mikoto trailed off to a complete stop as realization dawned. "Wait. Are you saying—"

Connie's new smile actually had some joy to it. "That was mine. I think I was… ten? Ten and a half? I built the original prototype in a week, had the basic design uploaded in ten days, and had the instructions translated to sixty-eight languages in twenty."

Mikoto stared, again. What filled her eyes wasn't doubt, but surprise and wonder, because she had finally realized _why_ the foreign name sounded so familiar. She thought it was originally because of Ibn Battuta, a Medieval scholar and traveler who had the reputation of a Moroccan Marco Polo. But that was only part of it.

Academy City was the center of the world for science. While that meant that many great and amazing things and intelligent people came to it, with their ideas spreading out from there, it was still finite. It couldn't fit the entire world into it. So a lot of talent, ideas, and geniuses never made it in.

Without being in the right place, at the right time, with the right people and resources, great ideas could fall to the wayside and out of memory.

That didn't stop talent from succeeding, it didn't prevent ideas from taking form, and it didn't mean those geniuses faded away. But when you tried to accomplish something major through science, and you _weren't_ in Academy City…

The world tended to ignore you. It wasn't quite deliberate, but if Academy City didn't publish something, people assumed it was "just" a theory, an idea, a vague proposal, even if it was a concrete study and proof of concept.

At best, if someone was associated with one of the major universities, corporations, or other entities that managed to qualify as "Cooperative Institutions of Academy City", they _might_ be able to start getting recognition. They were limited as well, however, and with rare exceptions, the organization as a whole would take credit for the accomplishment of its members, no matter how many were actually involved.

What that all meant was that it took a _lot_ for an individual with talent and genius outside of Academy City to shine brightly enough to be seen by the rest of world. And if that was the case, how bright would they have to be to be seen by Academy City itself?

It would be like a star surpassing the sun.

It was an outrageous idea, not worth a thought.

But the name "Constance Battuta" had managed it.

"Holy shit," Mikoto muttered, most unladylike. The genius foreigner giggled in surprise.

Constance Battuta was considered one of the most brilliant people in the world, but her very existence was in doubt. The name constantly showed up on studies, documents, scientific journals, but there were no publicly accessible videos or photos.

The only thing that prevented that person from being a complete myth was the sheer number of very well-known figures who had met her, taught her, or even learned from her, often at lectures. Mikoto had believed it was a pseudonym for a research group, but she'd never been able to prove it (not that she had taken too much interest in doing so).

The name was even registered as a graduate or associate at nearly a dozen universities around the world—all of which were cooperative institutions.

Connie's grin was genuine, if slightly twisted. "Well, I was kind of hoping nobody knew that name before looking me up, but, well… at least my picture's not out there or any real details about me, other than the basics."

"I'm just… astonished. You've made a _huge_ number of designs and products that are designed for ecologically-friendly use, for the poorest regions in the world, and most of the time you don't take money for them. I've had teachers and professors call them 'miracle works.'

"Why in the world would you _want_ to come to Academy City? You realize that it usually owns the rights to things its students and faculty create, right? You won't always get to decide what to do with what you discover or invent."

Part of Mikoto questioned if she was being played, but she wasn't picking up any sense of falsehood. And she was resolved to check what this girl was telling her as soon as she could. Uiharu would be particularly interested if she couldn't do it herself.

"I'm rich enough," Connie said casually. It wasn't a boast: she had the same tone as if talking about how warm the day was. It was a simple statement of fact. "Besides, I didn't come to Academy City to make money or become famous or anything else. That's why I'm _trying_ to find a school that'll take me without absurd conditions."

"Eh?"

"I have not been around a _single person_ my age in _over __ten years_."

Mikoto reviewed the conversation. Remembered how this had started. Things started to click.

"Part of it was just stupidity on the government's part," Connie continued as the puzzle came together in Mikoto's head. "Not that that's a surprise. But part of it was… justified. When I was little, I had very poor control over my power. I never intended to, but I ended up hurting a lot of researchers, scientists, doctors, nurses… as well as a lot of scumbags that deserved it. And all that was _after_ my abilities awakened, and that was... it was really bad."

She sighed and pulled her legs in, hugging her knees. For a moment, she looked far younger than her sixteen years. "But that meant that I ended up being kept locked up in labs, fake apartments, quarantined houses… and away from anyone my own age. Sometimes the workers would bring in their kids, but most of them were too scared of me to risk it.

"It basically came down to a few nieces and nephews being able to come and visit me, from time to time, but I never had a chance to really know them. And there's a difference when they're family and not someone who _wants_ to establish a relationship."

She leaned back, pushing her legs down and staring up at the sky through the brief openings between the leaves. "So, when I learned about Academy City actually _existing_, the idea of being around people my own age, who wouldn't be scared of me… yeah, I wanted that."

"Wait, you didn't even know Academy City _existed_?" Mikoto couldn't accept that someone with _that_ level of brilliance could be ignorant of the capital of science.

"I didn't believe it was an _actual city_ with schools and children," Connie explained. "All I ever read about it were research results, product development, environmental issues, things like that. I figured it was some sort of corporate pseudo-city: just a huge block of land run for-profit and a place people commuted to, rather than lived. So I just never bothered to try and confirm if that was the case or time.

"Most of my time was being spent trying to find some way to make myself 'normal', so I could actually have a life again. When I first learned about Academy City, I figured it was just exploitative torture like the hell I was already in. I didn't want to imagine anyone else sharing my misery.

"Then, a few years ago, I was actually allowed _outside_. Not into some walled compound or the middle of a damn desert to test my development, but to another _country_. All so I could give another tedious lecture, but still. It was the _outside world_!"

"To here?" Mikoto wouldn't have thought like this a month ago, but she'd since experienced Academy City's dark side. She had a hard time believing they would ever let someone like this—assuming this really was all true—leave peacefully.

Connie shook her head. "No, no. It was just a hop across the border to Tijuana—to Mexico. Still a big deal to me. Probably the first time I was allowed out of the country in five years. Well... officially."

Mikoto frowned while Connie looked away, scowling at a memory she didn't voice. There was a sudden itch in the back of her mind. Something about that was familiar...

"It was an Academy City 'Cooperative Institution Development and Relations Exhibition.'"

Mikoto's eyes widened. Connie was staring at the sky through the tree and didn't notice.

"They had a bunch of things there, but the intention was to foster relationships with semiconductor and medical device manufacturers in Tijuana, as well as do some PR stunts. Apparently they had some Level 5 there to show off and impress people."

And then her eyes narrowed.

"You don't sound like you actually saw h—them."

"I didn't."

"You weren't interested in seeing a Level 5?"

"Eh." Connie shrugged while still on her back. "I mean, no disrespect to whoever it was, but I already _knew_ abilities existed. I didn't care about seeing someone else with them. Not that it mattered. Apparently they were near my age, so Aniki cajoled me into trying to meet them, even though I was against it."

"Why?" A lump was growing in Mikoto's throat.

"Because what if I liked them?"

"…Huh?" That nervousness abruptly dissipated and she could breathe again.

"They might have been some arrogant asshole, sure. I'm used to that, so I could've dealt with it.

"But what if they were nice? What if they were silly or cute or smart or just fun to be around? We'd be able to talk and compare notes and maybe even show off our abilities… but for how long? A day? Two? The entire event was only five days, and they didn't do that 'demonstration' until the third. I think the song's wrong: I'd rather _not_ know what I'm missing.

"Aniki didn't care though, so he spent a bunch of time trying to convince me to meet them before just forcing me. But when he managed to drag me to their room, they were out. Apparently they were allowed to go and actually enjoy the city on their own."

She laughed at herself. "It was my own fault for getting my hopes up. Honestly, I think I was just glad that someone else _like me _wasn't another bird in a cage. Jealous too, but happy."

_It isn't always like that. The Russians really didn't want me moving around at all_, Mikoto thought to herself sheepishly, fighting down a rush of embarrassment and guilt. _The Mexicans were more accommodating to a twelve-year old girl's wants._

She had of course, been that twelve-year-old girl, extremely eager to see a different part of the world. Mikoto felt mildly ashamed that her past-self had gotten bored of Tijuana so easily, thinking it was nothing special.

Mikoto regretted that she hadn't stayed in her room a little more often back then. It made no sense to do so, but still…

"But, maybe it was a good thing." Connie sat back up and looked around, taking in the view of the park, the distant towers, everything she could. Her smile was small, but it seemed to shine.

"Huh?"

"It was an 'Outreach' program too, remember? They were doing that System Scan thing for kids, they had students from all different grades there to meet people and tell them about the city. On the way back from that room, I _did_ get to talk with them quite a bit. It's why I started learning Japanese right after.

"The moment I learned that there were actual _people_, real kids, people like me here… I just had to get out."

"I'm kind of surprised you were able to."

"Well, our new president did a lot," Connie told her. "The last administration used every damn trick in the book to label me a 'national security asset' to keep me isolated. They even tried to lock down my computers, the little ranch-slash-free-range-prison they'd given me, everything."

"Heh. I take it that it didn't work for them?"

"Heh heh. Nope! Aniki kicked their asses every time they tried something too blatant, and I'd made my own networks to the outside world already. He stopped playing nice when he realized that they had implanted a bomb in my skull before I went to Mexico."

"Wait, wait, _they what?!_"

To Mikoto's astonishment, Connie only shrugged. "They wanted to be sure I didn't run off. I disarmed it as soon as I got on the plane anyway, so it just never bothered me. Their hysterics when they realized that were well worth the trouble."

"I'm… glad to hear it," Mikoto said slowly, unsure of how to take it when someone could be so blasé about their own life. Connie didn't seem to notice and continued.

"Anyway, once they were out of power, the real holdup was getting in touch with a member of the Board. Once that was done and Katze was elected… well."

She reached back down into that green flannel wrapped around her waist. Almost as an afterthought, she pushed herself up to check on Leif, who was chasing dragonflies and grasshoppers. Oddly, he ignored the birds not too far away.

She held up a thick, reddish-brown leather-bound book. It had a silver engraving of an eagle: The Great Seal of the United States.

For someone who had effectively grown-up in Academy City, a physical passport would normally be laughably antiquated. They implanted nanotracking devices when residents left and used a huge variety of biometrics to verify identity. The only physical thing that was used was a laminated card, and that was only to comply with the rest of the world.

Yet somehow, that all felt insignificant compared to the small, tangible book in front of her. It was probably mostly empty, yet that little thing carried such a massive weight that Mikoto actually felt it pressing down on her.

"I got approval to enter the city pretty quickly, but that's probably thanks to Sena-nee. Or should I go with Anego?"

"Um." Mikoto _had_ to interrupt at this point, now that the topic had abruptly rotated something she could actually respond to. "I just want to make sure you understand, you realize that those particular terms have, uh, other implications, right? Specifically, 'aniki' and 'anego' tend to be associated with fairly… unsavory people. Like, yakuza. Err, _'mobsters'_."

"Oh, I know!" Connie laughed. "Trust me, it _fits_. Then again, Sena-nee has been here and in Anti-Skill for three years, so I guess she'd handle it less well than Aniki. I'm trying to get used to Japanese terms instead of just calling them by name."

"Ah. I was actually going to ask that next. English doesn't have anything like that, right?"

"Nope. Honestly, I could probably just call her 'Sena', but it's kind of useful to be able to indicate her relationship to me at the same time, right?"

"Hmm. I suppose so. It's my native language and I'm an only chi—err, yeah, only child—so I never thought that deeply on it." She hoped Connie didn't pick up on the brief hesitation there. She was briefly caught between her newfound acceptance of having "siblings" and needing to keep that fact secret.

"That's understandable." Connie gave her a concerned look, but continued on. "But anyway… so, that's my story. Or a summary of it, rather. I've been touring schools all around the city, but I kind of like this place the most so far." It was not a smooth segue. It wasn't supposed to be.

It was more of a declaration that Connie was done moaning about the past as she returned her passport to its mysterious pocket dimension. She started stretching, finally realizing how stiff she'd gotten.

"Really? The School Garden's just girls, though. I would've thought you'd prefer a coed school."

Connie stood up to stretch. "Naaaaaaaaaaa-a-aw. I mentioned I had a lot of siblings, didn't I?" Mikoto nodded, biting down on her anger as Connie's motions caused curves in front and back to be accentuated. "Well, I spent a lot of time with them, and most of them are all boys. I'm kind of sick of that half of the species."

Mikoto laughed despite herself. "I understand very well. But are you sure you want to dump yourself straight into the other half?" Connie failed to notice the dark shade that came over Mikoto's eyes.

"Hmm. What do you mean? I know there's a lot of tropes and clichés about all-girls-schools. But it's not like they all have to be one-hundred-percent true, right?"

"Well…"

That was another example of a trope, actually. As was being cut off before she could try to explain.

"_Oneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!_"

Mikoto shivered and paled. _Again?! How does she manage this?! _Connie tilted her head in confusion at the Asian girl's reaction, before turning away.

"Is someone's little sister lost?" she asked, looking around, concerned like any well-rounded individual would be. The distress in the mysterious girl's voice was clear in any language.

"No, no. Nothing that fortunate," Mikoto groaned.

"Eh?"

Before she could explain why a lost little girl crying out for her big sister to come save her would be preferable, the explanation provided itself. There was a flat, dry popping noise, followed by blubbering tears, twintails, and a much cleaner uniform slamming into Mikoto.

"Oneeeeeeeeee-saaaaaaaama!" Shirai Kuroko wailed. "I was _so_ worried! We were supposed to meet up for our date _hours_ ago!"

Mikoto, having expected the 11th dimensional attack, had managed to keep her arms from being pinned, but couldn't prevent the inter-dimensional glomp. Which meant she was now in a bizarre grapple with the twintailed brunette, who was rubbing her face against her senpai's developing (but still very much present) chest, while desperately fighting against being pried off.

"K-Kuroko! Knock it off!" Mikoto had to resist the urge to just start zapping her, mostly due to Connie's proximity (she also didn't know where that cat was and her fear of scaring him off was absolutely not a bigger factor than Connie's safety). "It wasn't a date, damn it! We were going shopping with Saten-san and Uiharu-san!"

"A double date, then!"

"Goddamn it, _no_ Kuroko! And how do you always have this kind of timing?!" She started to charge up, the air crackling around her. Connie was staring agape at the two middle school girls seemingly practicing some sort of street wrestling. "Battuta-san, get ba—"

Before she could finish that thought, a silver and brown blur flashed through her vision, and _slammed_ into Kuroko's face from the side. Her roommate abruptly let go and started cursing, flailing her arms as something crawled, scratched, and hissed as it whipped around her head.

Kuroko fell onto the ground with a groan of pain and defeat, clutching her face. A moment later, looking a little fluffed up, Leif landed in front of Mikoto, meowed, and proceeded to groom his now-unkempt fur.

"…I love you," Mikoto whispered, dropping to her knees and taking out reserve treats. Her eyes warmed with an expression few would ever see again.

"Meowr." _I accept your tribute_, he seemed to say, going after the crunchy snacks first.

"I think that might be illegal," Connie observed, momentarily shocked back into English. "So, um, who is this? Should I call Anti-Skill?"

She prodded a twitching Kuroko with her foot like the first-year middle schooler was some poorly defused bomb.

"No, no… unfortunately, this is my kouhai. And my roommate."

"Oh. Oh! Good grief, Leif! So, um, I'm sorry, did he interrupt something? I'm sure we had the same thought that you were seriously in trouble. You didn't really look like you were enjoying that, um. Attention."

"Onee-sama is very tsund—GRRRRK." Kuroko's muffled statement was muffled further when Mikoto slammed her foot onto the back of her head. Connie stared, eyes wide with shock; Leif finished consuming his reward, which also consisted of headpets and scratching-behind-the-ears.

"She's my friend, but she has a severe issue with personal space. As well as major personality defects."

"Onee-samaaaaaa…" the defective kouhai whined.

"I… see. I think." Connie's laugh was so forced that it actually caused Mikoto to wince. "Well, as long as it works out. You're okay, right?"

"Oh, sure. But she was right, I did have plans to meet up with her and some other friends a while ago… I should get changed into something clean and head out." She looked down at the cat, sighed, and then looked to her roommate as she stood back up. "I guess I should drag her with me until she can teleport again." It was her idea of charity.

"Ah, so that's what it was. Might be a good idea."

Connie closed the distance between them and held out her hand. "I wanted to thank you for today. This was a lot of fun, actually. I'm really hoping we get a chance to talk again."

Mikoto took the hand and smiled. "Well, there's a good way to guarantee that." She pulled her phone that was shaped like a particularly special mascot character. "Since this seems like your first time, I'll take the lead."

"O-Onee-sama?! Are you saying that you've already had your—_GACK_!" Another foot slammed into her chest. Only once and only her chest. Not several times in such rapid succession that a professional kickboxer would have envied it if it hadn't been a grossly illegal move.

"I think I'm starting to understand the relationship between you two… Also, I'm not sure that brain trauma would resolve this."

"It's worth a try. Also, I'm glad. It saves me the agony of trying to explain it."

"I'm so sorry."

"Thank you."

Connie looked at Mikoto's phone. "So uh… what were you saying?"

"I assume you know about NFC, right?"

"Well, yeah. Why—"

"It's a lot easier to exchange contact info like this. So get your phone out."

"_Oh,_ that's what you mea—" Connie stopped, hand in pocket. "Wait. What?"

Mikoto was still smiling. For the moment at least, she felt like the older one. When it came to this sort of this, she was simply more experienced. _Misaka-senpai_ _sounds _very_ good_, she thought to herself, perhaps a little too smugly.

"I'm saying 'let's be friends.'"

The older girl's brilliant blue eyes went wide.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

Standard "wow will anyone read this?" rant here. But seriously, I have no idea how this ended up being nearly the length of the other two parts _combined_.

But yeah, say hello to Connie! Or Constance, rather. I'm trying to use her (and her family) as a way to explore Academy City in ways that Kamachi hasn't shown us, but that still requires establishing who she is and her relationships. Which, right now, consist of a cat, a fourteen year old girl, and a thirteen year old with an unusual... personality. I'm sure this can only go well. I'm pretty happy I decided against having Connie being an ice queen though: she was a radically different character when I first conceived her.

Part 3 should hopefully be edited and up sometime this week. It's shorter, at least at the moment, so I'm definitely hoping to get some feedback from folks sooner rather than later. Heck, I'd even appreciate knowing someone read this and had a laugh here or there.

Still debating if I should try bumrushing learning Japanese...


	3. Part 3 - Unscheduled Demonstration

**Part 3 – Unscheduled Demonstration**

A Certain Talented Hydromancer

What followed was a lot of blushing, fumbling, and confusion as Connie worked to find and enable a feature that her phone had, but that virtually no American ever used. Even the phones permitted for use within Academy City kept options like that available.

As Mikoto mused on that, she realized that the phone had no manufacturer markings.

"Hey, that phone… Did you make that yourself?"

"Hmm? Oh. Yup." Connie sounded disinterested. She was staring intently at her screen as it finally started to populate. "I have way too many family members and coworkers in here…"

"Coworkers?"

"Sounds better than 'the jerks who experimented on me'. Most of them are actually pretty good people though. Or their kids are _adorable._ Or their pets—Oh! There you are!"

The cliché of the long-lonely girl breaking down in tears and sobbing her thanks while clutching her phone didn't _quite_ happen.

Quite.

Absolutely didn't.

She rubbed her eyes exclusively due to allergies. "Jeez. So I actually _am_ older than you, huh? Some display I am."

"Heh. Don't worry about it. Just leave it to Misaka-senpai!" That confidence really was boiling over now.

"Um, about that…"

"Kuroko is both enticed by Onee-sama's sudden confidence, but I'm also worried that it'll result in a violent crash." The twin-tails girl had finally been able to sit up and was glaring angrily at Leif. Her attempt at intimidation would have been more effective if she hadn't been using her "Onee-sama" as a shield.

"I-I-I'm sorry, that was too much, wasn't it?" The airship _MM Confidence_ crashed violently indeed. She staggered as if hit by a falling lid when the last water finally boiled out of the pot.

"N-no, not that… it's just, um, wow, why am I so nervous?"

There was a gasp. "(Don't tell me this newcomer is going to confess to Onee-sama? Is this why she skipped out on our date?!)"

"Nobody but you would think that," both older girls said in unison, one in exasperation, the other deadpan. There were twin sighs and tired smiles.

"There went the tension."

"You've picked up on how to deal with her quickly."

"Well, I have a lot of experience with young children."

"Wait, _excuse me?_ I must have misheard, because I am sure you did not just refer to Kuroko as a young child!"

"Anyway," Connie continued, ignoring the fuming kouhai, "I should really ask, do you have an issue if I just call you Mikoto-san and you call me Connie… whatever? I don't care about honorifics myself, but I just. Don't want to insult or disgrace you."

Mikoto didn't actually care that much, but Connie was fiddling with her phone and fingers as she spoke. She was even shuffling her feet as her ears started to turn red. Her nervousness would have been cuter if it wasn't coming from a long history of isolation and anxiety at driving someone away.

"No, I don't mind at all. Do you want to give it a try though?"

"Alright, um… Don't you have somewhere to be, Mikoto-san?"

"Hehe. Actually, I do, Connie-san."

Kuroko stared into infinity with dead eyes. Leif watched her suspiciously. Connie waited. Mikoto smiled.

"See? Not that scary, right?"

Connie's smile grew blindingly bright. "Another cultural question, is hugging appropriate?"

"Oh, well that's an easy one."

There was a brief embrace, accompanied by an ear-piercing scream from Kuroko that both of them ignored; it was cut off a moment later by a furry cannonball hurtling into her face.

Hugging had various implications in Japanese culture, and it was something that was traditionally uncommon to see, especially in public.

But Academy City wasn't particularly traditional, and Mikoto was more a child of the city than of Japan itself: she was actually quite physically affectionate with her friends. Or at least, she had been, until a certain kouhai schemed up excuses to embrace at every opportunity, and then attempted to turn almost every embrace into something well past "skinship".

Besides, it just didn't feel much like a violation of personal space when it was an older girl who kept her hands in what a Westerner would call "the safe zones".

There was a gasp and a sound like a punctured tire violently deflating as the twin-tailed girl collapsed. A victorious "_Rowl!_" accompanied the hard _THUMP_ of her hitting the ground.

_It's nice to get a hug from someone who doesn't try to grope me, actually_, she thought as they separated. It certainly did a lot to remind her why she had used to enjoy it.

Although, in a way, it felt almost like hugging a mom rather than a friend. She decided against saying that.

"Anyway, I really should be going. With… _this._" She lifted up Kuroko, who could have been a corpse if not for the bright red lines across her face. "Did you want to come with? You could meet some more new friends."

"Um…"

"No, no, don't worry. They're not like her, they're sane."

A groan that might have been protest rumbled from the almost-corpse.

"Oh, good. But honestly, I have to still make one more visit today. Actually." Connie stopped, sheepishly looking over the two Asian girls. "I _just_ realized, that's Tokiwadai's uniform."

"But of course! Onee-sama is the Ace of—" This time Kuroko got her mouth covered by Mikoto instead of a kick.

"I thought so." Mikoto was afraid that she'd been too late, but it turned out to be unwarranted. "That's actually the last school I had to go to."

"(Be quiet about that)," Mikoto warned Kuroko, removing her hand.

"(I don't get it, but fine)," her junior responded. The younger girl did a double-take and narrowed her eyes at Connie. "Hold on a moment, aren't you too old to be interviewing for a middle school?"

"Yeah, I thought the same thing." Connie sighed. "Oh, should we be walking? Don't you have to go?"

"Oh, right! Well, the gate we're need to go is in the same direction as the school." Mikoto also had to change out of her ruffled and fur-covered uniform (it could have almost passed as a fur coat), but her dorm was outside of the Garden anyway.

"That's good! We can talk on the way then." She waved her arm, letting the local girls lead the way, while bending down to retrieve Leif. To Mikoto's astonishment, he wrapped himself around her neck almost like some horribly tacky old fur.

Except, unlike those terrifying reminders of human cruelty, Leif was actively looking around and it was both an amazing and adorable sight. Not only that, but for Mikoto…

_I'm soooooooo jealous!_ She fought with all her might to hold back the tears and avoid trying to bribe Leif back onto her shoulder. _Play the long game, Mikoto, play the long game..._

"So, as I was saying a while ago, the Board isn't really happy with an outside esper showing up. Especially someone with no educational history until six years ago. Heck, I don't even have my GED."

"GED?" Kuroko asked, repeating the English acronym. She returned to mumbling things under her breath that both Mikoto and Connie made it a point to ignore.

"General Education Diploma," Connie asked in English, before switching back to Japanese. She repeated the literal translation and added, "basically, it means you completed compulsory schooling in the US."

"You never attended school before?" Kuroko hadn't been there for Connie's explanation, so the sneer on her face could almost be justified. "(First that simian reject, now an uneducated rube. Onee-sama, what are you doing when I'm not there to protect you?)"

So it was only "almost".

"Only when I was very little. I spent a few years in labs and by the time I was done with those, I was already taking university courses."

"B-wuh?"

Mikoto snickered. She had avoided slamming an elbow into Kuroko's side not only to avoid drawing Connie's attention to her comment, but to make this moment sweeter.

"Hmm? Oh, right, I didn't tell you this yet. I'm Connie Battuta. Most people know me better as Constance Battuta, though."

"Constance… wait, _what?!_" Sure enough, the first year from Tokiwadai recognized _that_ name.

"So, I think I was about nine and a half when I got my first college degree… granted, it was a lovely little two-year school from the Midwest, but it let me apply to others. I think my first _big_ achievement was that Masters from Stanford. No, wait, did I get the PhD from MIT first? I know I didn't finish Yale until after my twelfth birthday…"

She wasn't simply bragging. To the rest of the world, Constance Battuta was an eccentric who collected major degrees from universities that were such a big deal that even Academy City took them seriously.

For Mikoto though, she'd come to realization that Connie Battuta had been taking those courses to try and stay sane, as well as in hope of finding some way to be "normal".

"No, wait, maybe that was the second PhD from Bologna… well, anyway, lacking a conventional history apparently ticks off some of the higher-ups from this city. They want me to live in a lab or work at some institute, but I have absolutely no interest in changing prison cells or being isolated from people again."

Based on Connie's subtle smirk, she was definitely trying to fire back at Kuroko for earlier. Given that the twin-tailed girl flinched at each name, it seemed her counterattack was quite successful. She increased her pace a bit until she was alongside Mikoto.

"So one of the conditions to have a 'normal' life here included taking aptitude tests and going through the secondary school curriculum. It's honestly a really flimsy excuse, but it seems like it's a way for Academy City to save face."

Connie laughed, more to herself than anything else. "Of course, then I found out that my 'sponsor' on the Board also runs Tokiwadai, so I'm pretty sure this is what she was angling for in the first place."

"O-o-okay," Kuroko managed to stammer. She had been glancing at Mikoto with the desperate hope that the Electromaster would confirm that the foreigner next to them was amiably insane, but no such luck. While still walking alongside her, Kuroko took out her phone and quickly started searching, while sending an urgent message to her partner in Judgement.

"B-but, uh, you do realize that Tokiwadai only accepts espers, right? And you have to be at least Level 3."

"Oh, I know. Apparently the Chairwoman is going to come along for a demonstration today, but even if she doesn't, as long as I can convince the faculty that I'm at least a Level 4, I should be good."

"Wait, _what_?" Both Tokiwadai girls' heads snapped towards Connie. She had delivered _that_ bombshell with all the excitement of saying "if I can prove I can walk on two legs, I'll be let in."

Kuroko's phone pinged and she looked down in a panic, hoping that Uiharu would have some revelation to end this nonsense.

_That's a weird thing to suddenly ask someone, Shirai-san. But I did find the record of a Constance Battuta entering the city in the last month and going through the immigration process before that._

The picture was an exact match.

_I was really surprised! She's a _super_ famous inventor! And she's really as young as people thought! I can't believe she's actually moving to Academy City! Is she coming to lecture at Tokiwadai or make some new power source out of branches and rocks?_

That wasn't mockery. One of Constance Battuta's many doctoral theses hypothesized that specific natural and synthetic forms of stone could be used for low-grade, long-term fuel sources with the right ignition and management system.

_If she is actually there, please, please _PLEASE _get me an autograph, Shirai-san! I'll owe you! I'll do anything! I'll even take over your office work for a week!_

Kuroko's face fell briefly—_This really isn't a joke?!_—before a sinister expression appeared. _Oh, Uiharu. You've made a grave error in your excitement. I'll gladly accept that offer. Kufufufufufu..._ Elsewhere in District 7, a young girl with flowers in her hair shivered.

Connie groaned, one hand rubbing her head, the other scratching behind Leif's ears. She seemed to fail to realize what had caused the girls to stumble, however.

"One of the things that's angering the Board is that a high-level esper was created outside Academy City. The only thing that seems to be going for me is that they also don't want to _lose_ that high-level esper either."

"High level? Wait, did you go through the System Scan? You had to, right?" Mikoto asked.

Kuroko had to hold back her anger: Academy City was the _only_ place in the world to develop ability users. That had been proven time and time again over decades. It took invasive brain surgery, drugs, and hypnotic suggestion, among many other morally questionable procedures to even begin to form an ability from one's Personal Reality.

And yet this girl next to them was acting like it was old-hat, when it was something that the children of Academy City would spend their lives struggling to obtain results. More than anything else, it was enough to convince her that the girl was lying, but the data Uiharu had sent over listed her as an esper, although it didn't mention her ability or its level.

_How is this possible? There's no way she shouldn't have anything listed if she's in that category. Is something blocking Judgement's access to it?_

As her fingers raced to type, the girl in question continued.

"Hmm? Oh, that thing? Yeah, I tried it a few times and it kept failing or returning null values. One of them kept calling me 'another #7', whatever that meant. The few times they got a reading it was at Level 5, apparent—oh! Mikoto-san, why'd you stop moving? Are we here?"

She'd gone right past them; she was so caught up in Leif's demands for attention that she hadn't actually realized they'd stopped. When she turned around, both girls were suddenly on their toes and in her face. She jumped in surprise, but each girl grabbed an arm to keep her close.

"You're a Level 5?!"

"No idea," Connie answered easily, if shakily. She was genuinely confused by their reaction. "That doesn't matter to me though. The Board member sponsoring my transfer was absolutely positive I couldn't be lower than a Level 4. But she told me that I'd probably be left as a Level 4."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"If you're displaying abilities equal to a Level 5, then why wouldn't you want that?" Kuroko asked before Mikoto could. They let go of her at that point, but didn't move any further away. "Unless you're going to claim that it doesn't matter." She said that last bit with sarcasm dripping from it, denying the possibility that _anyone _could think like that. But then…

"It doesn't."

Mikoto's own temper flared at the casual dismissal. She had struggled and struggled and _struggled_ to achieve Level 5. She had managed to take the potential everyone had and with pure will and utter determination, had broken through the massive wall between Level 3 and 4. She repeated it again on an order of magnitude greater to make it to Level 5. The time she'd spent pushing herself to go just a little bit further had been the hardest and darkest of her life. Or had been, until the events of this last summer.

Even so, it didn't make those times any easier to look back on, or the goal any simpler to achieve. To hear it dismissed as "no big deal" was not only spitting on her, but everyone else struggling to make it a little bit further than they did before. Especially the Level 0s who still tried and held up hope, even when it seemed pointless.

People like Saten, who had fallen so far into despair at their "failure" that they had put their lives at risk to change it.

Mikoto was about to explode at this girl she had started to think of as a friend. But as she breathed in...

"I didn't come here to show off. I went through _hell_ to control the ability I have, but I _fucking hate it_."

Mikoto's breath caught in her throat. Kuroko stumbled back from the raw anger in the American's voice. While Connie's volume didn't change, the emotion was vehement, the anger so real, that passersby flinched and even crossed the street to avoid them, staring at her like some feral animal.

"I spent _eleven years_ being poked and prodded and carved up and flung into every crackpot lab and prison cell imaginable for _nothing_. Only Aniki managed to train me once I was out of there, and even then I almost died every time I hit a wall. Did you know that none of those stupid articles about me mention how many times I got hospitalized? The only honest one mentioned _seventeen_ before I was twelve years old. And they wrote it up as some sort of _'congenital_ _defect_'."

She was fuming—no, she was actually steaming, literally. She wasn't even able to keep speaking in Japanese, having unknowingly switched back over to English in the middle of her tirade. Mikoto was starting to regret pushing her on her level assessment; next to her Kuroko was thinking the same thing, but it was lost under the bewilderment of what was being revealed. Leif was meowing softly and tapping her on the side of her head.

Even the air seemed to react to it. It was a warm day, but it had been dry, yet at that moment Mikoto it felt like the moisture in the air was getting hotter and thicker. It was even hard to breathe.

"I _had_ a life and the pure, raw, fluke of having an ability and being raised _anywhere else but here_ _stole it from me_. So as far as I'm concerned, it and everything that goes with it—levels, skills, whatever—can fuck off and die."

She took a deep breath. She closed those deep blue eyes. Then she opened them and her expression softened as they became unfocused. The glow that always seemed to be present fluttered softly, darkening and brightening along with her breathing, before returning once more. Her voice was calm and quiet, as well as in Japanese again.

"Or, well, that's how I used to feel."

"Used to?"

"I know that Levels mean a lot to people here, so I guess I should be more careful about how I talk about them... but I don't _want_ to be a Level 5. I just want something that won't close too many doors for me or prevent people from wanting to know me. If I could go back in time and make it so I never developed powers at all, _I would_.

"But I can't. That's not an option. So that's why I'm here, in this city, today, now." She held out her arms to her sides and spun in a slow circle, taking in the buildings and skyline that they could just barely make out. "I don't know _everything_ about this city. Aniki's been here for a few years and he's warned me not to get too giddy. Same thing with Sena-nee. But I can't help it."

She stopped her slow circle and looked back to the other girls. "I don't be in constant fear that someone will run screaming from me. I don't have to be locked up with a permanent guard like some unstable doomsday device. I don't have to _hide_ the things I can do or who I am. And, well, this is a little corny, but I wouldn't have had the chance to meet you, Mikoto-san, if I hadn't been here today."

Mikoto smiled, a little self-consciously. "Seems like it worked out a little, huh?" Someday, she promised herself, she'd tell her about having been that Level 5 in Tijuana.

That missed encounter worked out in the long-term, but she couldn't help but regret the chance to have known this girl earlier.

"It's a good start."

"Um, excuse me? What about Kuroko? Do I not count?"

The tension from earlier had dissipated as quickly as it had built up. The air was cooler and lighter, even compared to before.

"I'm still unsure how to categorize meeting you, actually. Besides, weren't you fuming and muttering angrily about me stealing away your 'Onee-sama' the entire way here? I admit I have trouble with quiet Japanese, but I definitely picked up on some serious hostility."

"No, no, no, of course not! My absolutely priority in life is to keep Onee-sama safe, so I must admit to having been overly vigilant with you today. Please, accept Kuroko's apology." She bowed deeply, her voice ringing like a bell with sincerity.

"Um," Connie stalled, looking to Mikoto. The senior middle school girl only stared back in confusion: she'd never seen Kuroko act so _formally polite_ before. "Alright, I-uh, o-okay. I accept your apology."

"Oh, Kuroko is very grateful for your understanding! Would you also be so kind as to sign something for her?"

"Eh?"

A quick flurry of movement took place as Kuroko teleported a notepad and pen into Connie's hands. The older girl was startled and Kuroko moved swiftly, not giving her a chance to recover. A few moments later, a short, personalized letter (in English) with a greeting in Japanese and her signature were teleported back into Kuroko's bag.

"Let's get going," the youngest girl ordered with that secured. The chuckles coming out of her seemed to be accompanied by a sinister black aura. "(Oh, Uiharu-san, you fool. Muahahahaha!)"

Mikoto and Connie followed behind her, slowly. The American wore a mask of dread and trembled.

"I've done something terrible, haven't I?"

"I can't deny that," Mikoto responded, unconsciously praying for Uiharu. "Maybe it's a good thing you won't meet the others today…"

"So, um, we're still friends?"

"Eh? Why wouldn't we be?"

"I could kind of see the fire and steam coming from your head when I started talking down Levels. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to belittle you or anyone else. Aniki and Sena-nee both gave me really long lectures about that, but I got sort of… caught up in the moment."

"Well… yeah, you need to be careful. I'm uh, _fairly_ high ranked, but I really worked to get to this point. Admittedly, I didn't have to go through the same struggles as you, but that doesn't mean it was easy."

"I see."

"And besides that, there's a lot of people in this city, even in the Garden and at Tokiwadai, who would do _anything_ to go up a single Level. I understand why you feel the way you do, but you have to keep in mind how many people are suffering as they try to climb even a little higher."

"Yeah… there was some incident a few weeks ago, that uh, Level Upper thing, right?"

"You know about that?"

"Yeah, like I said, Sena-nee is part of Anti-Skill. Her former training officer was part of the response force to the finale for that. Although I heard they had to rely on a Level 5 to actually solve things."

"Well, that's not entirely true. That Level 5 took care of, well… you probably wouldn't believe it, but it was basically a monster. Do you know the term _kaiju_?" Connie nodded. "Yeah, pretty much something like that. I know, it sounds absurd, but—"

"Not really." Connie's prompt rebuff took her by surprise. "Not any more absurd than kids shooting fire or teleporting, right?"

Mikoto laughed. "Well, yeah, that's true enough. Anyway, I—err, that Level 5, just helped um, tie things up."

"You do realize that taking out a kaiju would normally count as a final boss fight, right? That's more than tying things up, I reckon."

"Onee-sama, Battuta-san, we're almost to the main school gate," Kuroko called from ahead, interrupting Mikoto's train of thought. She seemed alarmingly impatient and kept petting the notebook with Connie's signature in it. The blue-eyed girl felt a faint sense of violation witnessing that.

"So, you have to put on a demonstration here?" Mikoto asked, slowing down. Connie shortened her normally long strides.

"Yeah. Not sure what they want yet, but I'm not too worried. Um… would you be alarmed to find me as a classmate? Or senpai, I guess."

"They confirmed that you'd be a third year?"

"That's what the Chairman told me, yeah. As long as I can get approval for admittance, they'll treat me like a third-year student and help me figure out an appropriate high school to move to after that. As long as I can have _enough_ time on my academic record here, it shouldn't be a problem."

"That'd be great! I'm not calling you 'senpai' though."

"Awww." Connie's disappointed tone was so perfectly melodramatic as to tear a surprise laugh out of Mikoto.

"But would you actually be attending class? Would you even need to?"

"Technically, no, but I want to. That's one of my conditions, after all. I want to be able to meet people and make more friends. I can't do that if I just skip every class, even if I don't need the lessons, right?"

"Very true. It makes sense in that case. But, uh, be careful about befriending people too quickly. There's a lot of factional fighting and ridiculous stuff like that here. Sometimes becoming one person's friend means making a lot of enemies. Although that's tamed down a lot the last two years, there's still one faction in particular you need to look out for."

"Oh?" Connie's brilliant eyes brightened. "Oh! I recollect that Tokiwadai has two Level 5s that don't get along. Something like that, yeah?"

"Ooof. You've heard that already? How long have you been in the city?"

"Officially, six weeks. I had to go through testing and quarantine nonsense for three of those though. Then there was another weeklong 'holding period' where I got bombarded with job offers and requests. I've only been able to walk around the last week and a half. I kept hearing that warning from all the other middle schools I've interviewed at whenever I brought up the Garden though. They couldn't 'express their concerns' enough, although they went out of their way to say that they weren't trying to badmouth anyone."

"…Great. I can't tell if they're looking out for you, or they want a high-level esper for themselves."

"It _could_ be both."

"Urgh."

"So I take it those Level 5s are a big part of the faction problem?"

"Um, well, one of them is. The other one is pretty anti-faction, which seems to piss off the first one. I—she tends to just have friends without caring about factions or cliques." Mikoto was starting to feel guilty about hiding her identity. It had started out as simply being missed (and she was so used to being recognized that it was weird to have avoided it for this long), but now it was starting to feel deceitful.

But she would also never have a better chance to trash-talk the #5 as an "objective observer".

_I swear Connie-san, I'll explain everything and apologize after today!_

"So just look out for any blonde, top-heavy girls who _clearly_ don't look like they belong in middle school. Err." Her eyes ran over Connie as she stuttered. More specifically, at Connie's figure. "Well, you're _not_ supposed to be in middle school either…"

"Ha! So a blonde version of me?"

"No, much more ridiculous looking. Just… be careful. Do you know the Level 5's powers?"

"Yeah, I reviewed them with Sena-nee during that week in quarantine. I thought it was a waste of time, but they're all pretty groovy, aren't they? Especially that #6."

"…?"

"So, Tokiwadai's Level 5s are, um, #3 and #5, right? Which one's the problem child?"

"The #5, Mental Out," Mikoto answered without hesitation. _I swear, I'll really explain it, Connie-san!_ "She likes to collect people, so… please be careful, especially if your ability is particularly interesting or amazing."

"I see. Thanks for the warning." She seemed to think for a moment. "Well, I guess it's technically an 'amazing' power, but it wasn't until I came here that I started to get an idea of why. I always thought Aniki was more impressive…"

Before Mikoto could ask why a normal older brother with a thuggish streak would be more impressive, Kuroko teleported in front of them. She locked onto Connie, wearing an emotionless mask; she'd transitioned over to "Judgement Mode", Mikoto realized.

"By the way, Battuta-san, I tried looking you up on the special purpose Bank database." There was no such thing. _I had Uiharu hack into the Bank to research you_, Mikoto translated, shooting a glare that Kuroko ignored. "It just says 'Hydrogen Diktat', which isn't something I've seen before."

"Ah, well. Hmm." She took an empty bottle out from… somewhere. Was it hiding in her chest? That seemingly endless pocket dimension hidden in the flannel tied around her waist? Mikoto was still running through theories as she opened the cap and tilted it upside down. "As you can see, nothing up my sleeve," she said with a bit of flair. She flipped the bottle back up. Mikoto thought she saw a very faint flash, but she couldn't be sure it wasn't just the sunlight hitting the glass.

"But now!" She threw the bottle to Kuroko, who caught it, poorly. Water spilled out of it and onto her notebook. She screeched and teleported it away, waving the notebook to dry it out. "Err, tah-dah?"

"Huh. So you can make water?"

"That would be the obvious conclusion, but it's not quite accurate. Although I have a deep affinity for water and derivatives." Neither of them paid attention to the girl's high-pitched scream of despair.

_I wonder if she knew just how to throw that bottle..._

"W-we're here," Kuroko said, as they finally neared a heavily ornamental gate. She was almost in tears over the likely destruction of her "gift" for Uiharu. "(All my plans… all my onee-sama bonding time…)"

"Technically, I don't _make water_. I order hydrogen to bond to oxygen, then I order the new molecule to change to a liquid state."

"Huh?"

Nothing about that was confusing, which was exactly why it made no sense. A Personal Reality could be a lot of things, but that level of control over a base element wasn't too unusual. What shook Mikoto was the claim that she could continue to control bonded compounds to that degree.

Connie looked to the gate. "Would I get in a _lot_ of trouble if I just went over this?"

"Of course." Kuroko's voice came from the grave, or one step away from it. She was staring at her ruined notebook. "And it's electrified. Onee-sama wouldn't have to be concerned, but—"

"That just means I don't touch it, right?" She took a big, tall step into thin air.

A moment later, a block of something that looked like a cloud swirled beneath her foot. Mikoto's eyes widened and Kuroko snapped out of her stupor. Other students noticed as she continued to create those cloud-like steps and climbed up them, quickly rising to the top of the gate. As she left each cloud behind, it rapidly evaporated, leaving only a momentary puff of steam behind.

"_Hydrogen Diktat_. That's not a bad name. I prefer _Hydromancer_, but apparently that's not very 'scientific'." She was talking back down to them, now past the height of the gate, more than three meters in the air. She was beaming.

As she looked down as a small crowd gathered, with very irritated guards calling for her to come down. She waved to the irritated guards and the crowd below before putting a hand on her chin. A moment later she brightened and, with closed eyes, spun both pointer fingers in front of her.

An instant later, swirls of ice and water began to appear around her. Eyes widened as they formed geometric shapes, traced things in the sky, and finally turned into floating molds of knights on horseback. The knights started to clash, each exchange of blows causing a cold rain to drizzle down onto the crowd below.

The crowd of girls squealed with delight, both at the spectacle and the relief from the summer heat. Small rainbows appeared, marking the defeat of various nights.

As the knights began to form up in lines and summoned artillery in the form of ghostly-white trebuchets and dark blue archers, Connie began to walk her way back down, to the other side of the gate. Even the teachers and guards were transfixed and unable to react.

During all this, Leif _rowled_ incessantly, either at being taken into the air or at the scene she was making. As soon as she got a step or so off the ground, he leapt down and fled from the spray of water. Connie only smirked.

In the distance, at the steps leading into the school proper, a number of adults and students were watching the spectacle. Most of the latter were running over, afraid to miss it, all semblance of manners and formality lost; the faculty weren't far behind, while trying to look like they were merely keeping order.

"So, _Diktat_ it is. I have absolute over hydrogen. Atomic, chemical, any form that it exists in. And anything that has hydrogen within it, I can affect that as well. Doesn't matter what its actual composition is, the atomic numbers involved, or how much or how little hydrogen there is within it. Although less hydrogen does make it harder to manage.

"Gas, solid, liquid, even plasma. If hydrogen exists in it, I can sense it, influence it, and outright manipulate it." She looked up and around at everyone now cheering the show. It had finally turned into a single remaining knight battle a large, icy dragon with steam pouring from it. "I can affect the chemicals and elements it bonds to almost as easily. Which means that I can do stuff like this. Although this is a rather intricate example."

She smiled at Mikoto and nodded at Kuroko, looking at the crowd. "I'm pretty happy about this. No bad screams, nobody's scared. It's a big difference."

Mikoto had to smile back. She couldn't even begin to guess the level of calculations Connie had to be performing, or how she was able to pull this off at all. Unless the entire thing was some form of mass delusion, she'd never heard of a power that could do something like this for so long. And the water that drizzled down was most definitely not an illusion.

_And that's before you try to analyze how she was stepping through the air._

As beautiful and ornate as it was to witness, it was overwhelming to consider how she was pulling it off.

"Well, this wasn't the real demonstration. I doubt they'll be content with this." She bowed as the knight, complete with strange red lines as she struggled—her helmet had come off, revealing a face that won Kuroko's approval and made Mikoto more than a little embarrassed—rose up from the verge of defeat to strike down the dragon. "But thank you. I hope to be able to call you a schoolmate soon."

Mikoto could barely be heard over the roaring cheers, but waved as Connie started to back away.

"I don't think it'll be a problem. See you soon, Connie-san."

"Erk!"

"Kuroko?"

"I didn't even think to record any of that! Arrrrrrrgghhhh..." The teleporter slumped to the ground in defeat, her last option for trade lost.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

Quick shout-out: Thanks for the reviews and follows folks! It was really surprising to see and quite flattering, and I've tried to respond to everyone via PMs (and one guest edit...)

And there we have it, the first story in what I hope will be a running series. With this completed, I'm intending to play with Connie, Mikoto, and the Railgun gang more in a short story collection. Especially since that gives me a chance to play in Tokiwadai, which has always felt grossly underrepresented in canon material.

Needless to say, ultimately the original characters introduced in this story will be a bigger deal going forward. As much as I love the Toaru universe and want to contribute to it, I don't want to rely on the canonical characters too much. Given that this is in English, written by an American with little knowledge of Japanese, no artistic (ie, drawing) ability, and no special connections, I doubt I'll ever be able to make any official contribution to the universe; but I can at least try adding something to the fandom.

So, what comes next for Connie is a series of short stories. Originally I was planning to just make them their own, ongoing story and close this one out as "Complete". But I don't know if people would prefer to have me leave this as the "Story" to follow. I'd prefer making a separate entry for "A Certain Talented Hydromancer's Short Stories" or the like and making that the "ongoing" entry.

The question for readers is, would you prefer that I just change the title for this and make it a collection of Short Stories, or make a new entry for those entirely? I'm not familiar enough with the site to be able to say which is preferred by the community at large.

That of course, excludes the fact that I do have a true, Kamachi-style arc planned for her once I build things up some more, and that will _have_ to be its own entry.

Also, for anyone interested in things that don't involve original characters, I'm open to suggestions for "_Scenes That Should Have Been_"! Check out my previous submission to the site to get an idea of what I mean.


	4. School Shorts 1

**A Certain Uneasy Sensation**

School Shorts #1 – Like a Sinking Feeling

"(Something's definitely wrong)," Connie Battuta muttered as she staggered through the halls of Tokiwadai Middle School. Her limbs felt unnaturally heavy and distant, almost like they were asleep while trying to wade through shoulder-deep water.

She'd left the Chairwoman's office more than fifteen minutes ago, after the debriefing that followed each "Ability – Practical Assessment." She'd been fine during most of the assessment, even when taken off guard, and during the debriefing, but now she was back to the same level of pain and fatigue that'd been haunting her all week.

Soon enough, she was struggling to keep upright, caught by a migraine that eclipsed anything else she'd ever experienced. She was barely even aware that she was walking.

If she had been able to keep up with that much, she might have realized that the halls were eerily empty. But she simply didn't have the mental capacity to spare for that, not with when her skull felt like it was about to burst like a lid off a boiling pot.

_Where's Leif?_ she wondered. The cat had been determinedly trying to keep her in her room the last few days, to the point where she had to rely on her shut-in roommate to hold him back.

_It's not the right time of the month… but is it really just stress? It's possible, this is all new for me, I'm around a bunch of new people. But…_

_That's not it, you idiot…_

She was even _sweating_. It was something she despised so much that, even as a child dealing with the trauma of her ability manifesting, she had unconsciously modified her body into regulating its temperature. She hadn't needed to sweat a drop since; the only exception being the first few days that had made it clear that she had hit puberty.

Every time she turned her ability on herself to create a diagnosis, the pain amplified dramatically, drowning the information under the noise. It sent shivers down her spine, accompanied by an irritatingly not-quite-familiar voice in her head.

It's just stress. Keep going. Just stress.

_Why haven't I reached out to Aniki?_ The thought bubbled up to the surface, even as the words fogged in her mind. _Or even Sena. I'd never go this long without telling them I'm having problems._

It has to be stress. That's all. Just keep walking. Desperate for a distraction, her mind drifted back to where a lot of this stress started…

* * *

"Oh, _excellent_ scores!" the Chairwoman had said when reviewing her academic assessment. She'd taken it nearly two weeks earlier, when her entry into Tokiwadai was formally approved.

"Well, mostly," Connie responded sheepishly, running a hand through her hair. Her uniform was so new that even washing it several times still left it feeling stiff. It was odd wearing the same thing as everyone else, she'd thought, plucking at the skirt. "I didn't do that well in literature."

It hurt to admit that. She'd gone into the first meeting with the Chairwoman and day-to-day leadership of the school with the utmost confidence. She was, even by her own admittance, pretty arrogantly certain of acing everything she'd come across.

That had lasted all the way until she came across her first poem.

What followed was something like a one-woman reenactment of the _Hindenburg_'s final moments.

"Oh, that's what I'm talking about. I don't care about your science and math scores."

"Err, wait, what?"

Connie had managed to scrape by in crafts with sculpture and sketching, while she had enough musical experience to actually pass that component (although the proctor had done so begrudgingly, reluctant to accept a guitar as valid instrument for a proper young lady).

But literature?

To put it into American terms, she had _absolutely bombed._

She could have accepted doing poorly with Classical Japanese: that was to be expected. But she had flunked through nearly every single test in every language Tokiwadai offered: Japanese, English, Russian, German, French, Italian, Hindi, Chinese, Spanish…

Oddly, she had actually done well with Greek. Comparatively speaking.

The translations she made were, in the strictest sense, accurate. Her weakness was comprehension and analysis. She could figure out the literal meaning of a passage easily enough, but if there was anything beyond that, it completely escaped her.

She couldn't even blame her appalling English scores on the proclivity of Japanese-designed English tests being difficult for native speakers to take: Tokiwadai went out of its way to source foreign language exam and study material from their native countries and cultures.

Which meant that the dismal grade was entirely on her.

"Um, how is that excellent, ma'am?" She sounded almost as deflated as she looked.

The Chairwoman's artificially youthful face twitched, her typical angry response held at bay by the cards in hand. Well, at least they were speaking in English, so Connie had no excuse to try using 'oba-san'.

"Because I was genuinely concerned that we'd have nothing to teach you. I won't stop you from participating in compulsory courses, but this does mean that your 'electives' are going to be determined for you."

Connie had already reviewed her essays and responses with several of the teachers, tutors, and even her new roommate and friends. Which was exactly why her face fell.

"Please don't…" she begged.

The Chairwoman's kindly smile concealed the rusty dagger she jammed into Connie's chest. "Oh, but we have to keep up our own standards, don't we? Don't you remember agreeing to any required courses, as long as your other conditions were met? Hmm?"

"Y-yes, ma—err, Chairwoman."

"Oh, so you do pick things up quickly!" the vain, evil, sadistic woma—young lady remarked. "Excellent, that says well for your ability to adapt to the workload."

Connie didn't cry.

She was able to prevent that from happening through force of will and rampant abuse of her ability.

* * *

Mikoto had at least been sympathetic when she'd told her, although she'd been struggling not to giggle. If it hadn't been for being lambasted by Connie the day after their first meeting for _not_ revealing who she was, she might've been a bit more honest about being so amused.

Which left it for Shirai Kuroko to eagerly rush in, weaponized words ready with a sadistic grin.

"So, looks like you're not a universal genius, hmm?"

"Kuroko!"

_That_ had managed to get her to cry, taking Kuroko off guard and resulting in a rushed apology. It didn't come in time to stop Leif from leaping at her head in retribution.

* * *

Her vision darkened every time she tried to take a turn she recognized and the throbbing in her head only grew louder. She couldn't even consciously use her ability at all at this point, not without risking falling to the ground.

_It can't be. I've never had this much trouble using my ability before. Not since _then.

Stress. It's just stress. Keep walking.

_Walking to where? Think!_

Something kept pulling her forward, while an uncomfortably familiar whisper hissed from somewhere below.

She'd been dealing with migraines since almost the day she'd arrived at Tokiwadai. At first she'd thought it had just been the stress from the fame her unauthorized demonstration had garnered—something that had angered the Chairwoman, while admittedly finding it amusing. It had supposedly cleared a great deal of logjams that had been in the way.

Then there were the number of boneheaded moves that had caused her to start being referred to as the "Prince of Tokiwadai", much to her horror. Yet that was at least an understandable source of pain.

Despite the time that had passed, the migraines hadn't ceased. They came several times a day, often when she was traveling through the halls.

_Wait, where am I?_ Speaking of halls, she didn't recognize the one she was in. It'd been like that for a while. Yet her feet kept moving, one in front of the other, despite her whispered protests.

Just stress. Ignore it. Just stress. Keep going.

Most of Tokiwadai was designed in a combination of traditions from Western Europe. The area she was in right now must have been older, or the result of an eclectic decision by the student body: it looked identical to the kind of hallway one would find in any Japanese school, to the point of being ripped right out of a manga.

It seemed to be some sort of specialized club building, which might have explained the outlandish design and the fact that it was seemingly empty.

She'd gotten lost during these migraines before, but she'd always been talking to someone or distracted. The feeling of being pulled in a specific direction was new and terrifying. She fought against it as best she could, which resulted in…

_I'm going in circles_. The whisper in the back of her mind was growing more insistent. She had seen that sign detailing club schedules no less than three times.

_I need… I need to ignore it. I _need_ to get a diagnosis._

It's just stress. Don't stop. Keep walking.

Hydromancer—or, as Academy City insisted on calling it, Hydrogen Diktat—had numerous applications and states of activation. Manipulating the temperature of her body via 'diktat' to its fluids was as natural to her as thinking and breathing. Yet even though she could tell that function was still operating, her body was shaking and sweating, like she had a fever—which she _knew_ she didn't.

She could monitor the values and properties of most fluids, as long as it came within her range of influence. That expressed itself most often as her stated "affinity" for water: a substance that made up the vast majority of the human body and every single fluid in it. That meant that monitoring her own body by extrapolation was second-nature to her.

Which was why she realized, slogging through the pain, it was so weird that she could check her temperature, but not the rest of her body's status. She couldn't even do the basics of "feeling" through the moisture in the air around her.

It was like there was an invisible wall on the very last step. Every time she tried to move forward, she bounced off like a tennis ball.

And as that thought struggled to keep its form and alarm bells distantly rung, an outside voice interrupted that process.

"Excuse me, are you quite alright?" Connie turned, unexpectedly swiftly for how disoriented she felt.

The voice that called out was mature, warm, and kind, and thoroughly unexpected. Connie turned in surprise to find a girl with the most outrageous ringlet curls she had ever seen, which (in her mind) ruined the model-like proportions of the young girl's figure. At the very least, those drill-like curls drew _far_ too much attention to themselves.

"I-I-I… I d-don't think so," Connie struggled to get out. It was true, but something about it struck her as false. Like it wasn't her own choice of words. "I'm lost."

"Oh dear!" The girl with drills for hair clapped her hands together. She seemed genuinely concerned, flashing a kindly smile. "Well, I'd be glad to help you find your way!"

"If it wouldn't be a bother, I would very much appreciate it." She gave an awkward bow, ignoring the feeling of her stomach flipping. Connie only really had two modes, for the most part. With friends and family, she was outrageously talkative and so physically affectionate as to qualify as "clingy".

If she was around someone unfamiliar however, she defaulted to speaking excessively formal. At times, and depending on the language, she could even come across as almost robotic. She had recently learned that there had been rumors of a "cool foreign beauty" around the campus earlier, but those whispers had vanished almost completely for some reason.

Neither of these were the result of deliberate choice, but were rather enforced behaviors from having to live between the extremes of a family's warmth, and the cold sterility reserved for a lab animal.

"Of course not!" The girl's pale gray eyes seemed to sparkle so much that actual stars appeared.

An odd, uncomfortable sensation was spreading across her skin as the girl took her hand and led her away.

"_Remember to listen to your instincts. They won't always be able to tell you what the right answer is, but they'll always tell you what's wrong."_

She clutched the peace-sign medallion around her neck through her shirt. It was a ritual she hadn't gone through in a long time, her step-father's words briefly clearing her mind.

It calmed her enough to induce a slight meditative state. It wasn't as effective as self-hypnosis, but it did enough without any of the risks.

It cleared her mind, pushing the pain down and dragging her consciousness above it. It didn't actually alleviate any of the symptoms, but it could allow her to properly focus and use her ability, however briefly.

She felt her body warm briefly. The pain in her head intensified, to the point where she thought her brain might crush itself against her skull. But that was what she needed to break through the blockage in her thoughts.

She forced a "scanning pulse" through her entire body, comparing its current state to her norm. The pain intensified dramatically.

It's just stres—_lies! Get out of my head!_

Something was screaming in her brain, just barely perceptible. It felt like someone whispering while a television screamed with white noise. Or perhaps like someone trying to yell over crashing waves in a storm.

_I'm being interfered with… something's pushing me down as I try to stand, but I can't _see _it or even feel it. I can only sense it after the fact. It's like trying to swim with my legs tied and weights on my arms._

Something _was_ wrong. Her brain chemistry was dramatically off from the norm. Another pulse and she found the cause: the fluids in her brain were failing to pass through bioelectric currents in some areas.

To put it into simpler terms, she had a short-circuit in her brain. Signals were firing and mostly arrived were they were supposed to, but others seemed to hit a wall and were discharged without arriving.

While she wasn't a neurologist, she had more than enough experience with righting her own brain and body chemistry after invasive experiments to recognize at least some of the most affected areas.

Specifically, her memory.

She could _feel_ that something had been intruding on her memory, although she wasn't able to tell how far it had been compromised.

It was like coming home to discover deep gouges and scratches on your door lock: you would know that someone had tried breaking in, but it wasn't possible to tell if they had succeeded until you looked for something missing.

And of course, since this was _memory_ itself under threat, it was quite possible she'd never realize that anything was missing at all.

After another few pulses, she discovered that something else was going on: there were signals firing in places they shouldn't be, in ways they shouldn't be. It wasn't something she could readily put into words, but _something_ was pushing her around.

That _something_ was also trying to block the use of her ability. Each time she pulsed, the pain grew more and more intense. She embraced that however, because it caused the areas of the brain responsible for it to light up like they were catching fire. She could use that.

She might not know exactly how her brain was supposed to be functioning—she'd have to fix that in the future—but her subconscious and her body's autonomous nervous system did. She'd wipe the changes and malfunctions out entirely and let those systems restore things to a valid state.

It would take time and it would cause some confusion for her as she effectively rebooted parts of her brain, but it would work.

But in the meantime, she was stiffly walking alongside the stranger that had appeared. Much of the pressure she felt on her body dissipated when she did so, but the pounding in her skull grew more intense.

"I do apologize for all of this," the drill-ringlet girl murmured, her voice distant. The pressure in Connie's skull had increased so much that she had to close her eyes, which felt on the verge of bulging out of her head.

She was putting more and more effort into her ability and so she 'felt' numerous new bodies around her and the girl holding her hand. She was almost being dragged along now, barely able to lift her feat, and yet the girl showed no signs of distress pulling someone nearly ten centimeters taller than her.

She realized she was surrounded by a circle of girls at this point, all of whom felt _off_. A quick, painful pulse of the moisture in the air around them and within their own bodies…

_Yes. Found it! _

_The same venom crawling through my skull is well-settled in theirs._

While she didn't know how their bodies should normally be operating, their brain chemistry shouldn't look nearly so similar to her own. It absolutely shouldn't be identical to each other's.

As much as she could while trying to avoid passing out, she started issuing instructions. A combination of her constitution and ability gave her an unnatural amount of direct control over bodily regulation and function, and she was using that as much as she could in her current state.

She was surrendering more and more control of her body to maintain and strengthen these instructions, to the point where she was dimly aware of stumbling as her brain stopped sending signals to her limbs, only as something else seemed to step in and take over.

It felt like someone else had tied fishing line around her fingers and was trying to pull her along like an oversized puppet. It _hurt_, but she didn't have time to waste on that. It was far less distracting than what had been fogging her mind until a few moments earlier.

Her vision started to blur. It felt like she had her head in a tub of molasses: she could make out vague shapes and light, but only barely, and even sound felt beyond muffled and distorted.

Yet ringlet-curl's voice was still crystal-clear and she could tell how much her voice had changed. It didn't even seem like the same person. "I dislike having to do things like this. But well, you won't remember it. At worst you'll lose out on a few minutes of your time. I can't afford to put this off any longer."

_This isn't from the pain_. The unfamiliar voice was reassuring, despite the rage that resonated in each syllable. _The pain is a consequence of my attempt to counteract this invader. Some goddamn rat has chewed their way into my brain._

The world went dark, but Connie was still aware enough to realize that her body was still moving, although it was doing so completely without her instruction at this point _Whatever this influence is, it's attempting to disrupt my sensory awareness, but it's less successful._

She kept thinking, trying to hold onto that enraged voice. It was almost like she was having a conversation with herself. As she did, while she was losing control over her movements, the pain in her head was starting to fade.

It was almost like it was retreating from her brain to her periphery. An eerily familiar sensation like ropes coiling around her limbs and cutting into her skin covered her. Yet it was so much more _distant_ now.

_The most likely cause of all this pain is a conflict between my own ability and someone else's. Supposedly conflicting abilities of a similar nature either cancel each other out when there's no Level difference, or the higher Level overwhelms the lower one._

_That explains why I'm still having to fight, damn it. This invader's ability is too specialized. Every time I make a minor modification or block a path, they just open up a new one. You can protect the active consciousness in the brain, or control the body, but I can't do both at the same time without understanding how this poison works._

_Basically, I have to purge one set of functions or the other, or I won't be able to protect anything._

_Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. _

So the cause of this had to be, in likelihood, an esper whose ability functioned on similar principles as her own.

_Well it can't be Kohane. She just wouldn't…_ _oh._

She was, officially, a Level 4, but for all practical purposes, she was a Level 5. Which meant that there was only one possible culprit. She hadn't met her, but she knew the name and ability and the face now.

After the embarrassment of casually talking about Level 5s in front of the #3, she'd obsessively studied up to avoid humiliating herself like that again.

_Yeah, seemed like it'd be that bitch, huh? Especially since they keep screwing with a lot of the same properties I'm supposed to be controlling. They're actively fighting back and I'm able to keep from getting completely shut out, but they're targeting _me _specifically. But now that you know how her ability works…_

_So I need to find a way to buy enough time to cause them to pause so I can get ahead of the—wait. "Me specifically?" No, never mind._

She ignored the oddities of her own mental stream; it simply wasn't the issue at hand.

If the situation had been different, Connie would have argued with herself. But at least at that moment, she didn't bother.

Another quick pulse of her ability allowed her to get a proper reading on the girls around her, which confirmed that their own brains all seemed to be firing nearly identical signals to each other. Only Connie and the girl with the tool-looking hairstyle were different.

That explained everything.

There was only one esper that she was aware in all of Academy City who should be able to pull this off so easily.

She felt herself sitting down, still with her senses dulled. Perhaps the most surreal part of it was the sensation that someone not only pulled a chair out for her, but pushed it back once she had planted herself.

_You complete, utter _idiot! _There's a reason your brother kept telling you to expand your skillset!_

_Okay, can I please hold off on the self-castigation until later? I need to get ready to fight back. _

Her sight abruptly returned. Or perhaps her conscious mind was allowed to process it again. As a result, it wasn't technically blinding, but it did throw her off long enough for her limbs to get locked down.

It felt like her arms and legs had turned into sandbags, almost like they were asleep, but not quite as uncomfortable.

She was able to see that she, and the mastermind behind all this, were at the kind of table one would find at a stereotypical café, complete with a beautifully maintained garden.

It seemed that the Level 5 responsible for this saw no reason to maintain the mental assault on her. Or rather, _she_ was satisfied with leaving Connie with a free mind and a locked-down body. She couldn't move anything more than her eyes.

_No, that'd be me finally getting a handle on her damn tricks. Just a little bit more and I'll put an icicle through her skull…_

Connie instinctively fought back against the sudden, violent urge rising up from her gut. It was probably a good thing that she couldn't move: the image of blood flying through the air simultaneously gave her relief and nearly caused her to be physically ill.

_Fuck this! I will _not _be chained again! I can end this _now—

_*BEEP*_

Her thoughts came to an abrupt, hard stop. A wave of vertigo and nausea wracked her body.

"Hmph. What an interesting form of resistance ability. Not quite at Misaka-san's level though~"

The sighing voice was familiar, but came from a throat that it actually fitted, rather than being projected through someone else's.

_I'm never going to hear the end of this from Aniki, am I?_ Connie griped silently. The other voice was damningly silent. She got the distinct sense of someone pouting.

She saw a girl with long blonde hair, gold-colored eyes, and a delicately gloved hand lazily holding onto a TV remote. What struck Connie the most though was the charming smile that positively _screamed_ that it was fake.

It was the same sort of expression she had seen for a decade on so-called scientists, social workers, doctors, and others. Something that was far too practiced and far too perfect to be natural.

The hair on her arms stood on end and every instinct told her to fight back _now_. Connie fought against that urge instead, struggling to keep control, all while the blonde took a long sip of tea, seemingly ignorant of the tempest in Connie's mind. Violent gales of raw emotion collided and fought, drowning her thoughts.

"I'd like to say what a pleasure it is to meet you, but I think we can agree that would be patently untrue under these circumstances~ So let's just get to the point !"

At that, Shokuhou Misaki, the Queen of Tokiwadai, waved a remote control like a wand and pressed a button. There was another _BEEP_. Her senses cut out almost entirely. She felt like she was simultaneously pushed and pulled beneath the waves of a turbulent sea.

Then there was nothing but cold and black.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

And thus we begin...

But seriously, here we go! First real mini-arc of Connie's story, all in preparation for a full arc that is nearing completion (as far as prep work). For the sake of keeping things simple and bearable, I decided to just keep updating this "Story" with all of Hydromancer's shorts; that said, when I do start her own, full-fledged arc, it's going to be its own submission entirely.

As for this, it went through both a surprising amount of revisions, but only one truly major change. Deciding on how to have Connie "summoned" and what a certain queen would say was probably the hardest part. I feel like she's going to be a particularly difficult character for me to write faithfully. Well, that's for the future. In the meantime, Connie's going to be stuck in a sort of limbo... hopefully one where she doesn't drown.

As always, reviews, corrections, and notes are greatly appreciated!


	5. Analysis - Intercept

**Analysis**

Intercepted Assessment of "Hydrogen Diktat"

**FROM: SANITORIUM**

**BODY:**

I must insist, again, on the immediate neutralization of Hydrogen Diktat. This is not another "#7". The #7 was raised in Academy City and underwent the Curriculum. Hydrogen Diktat did not, has not, and has consistently outsmarted or outplayed all attempts to put her through it.

She has an extremely rigid morality despite her supposed upbringing: while she claims to be a pacifist, her family (both dead and living) are well known in military and intelligence circles, according to investigation by DIGGER. She has confirmed as much herself. I believe her pacifism to be a farce; she certainly demonstrates significant self-defense capabilities, far beyond of what would expect from a sixteen-year-old girl who supposedly spent a decade in prison cells.

Combined with the extremely nebulous nature of her ability, this marks her as an _extreme_ threat. I do not believe it is possible to safely control her as long as she retains any semblance of consciousness or free will…

**[REDACTED]**

…Her ability is not limited to simple manipulation of hydrogen itself. That was our initial assumption as well, and we were proven grossly wrong. Unlike those who manipulate other base elements and compounds (such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc) her ability escalates that by several steps.

Firstly, no recorded esper ability enables someone to not only control a base element, but seemingly all compounds that include that base element. Hydrogen Diktat herself claims that she prefers to manipulate water, but we've confirmed that other hydrogen compounds can be affected, but with reduced efficiency.

None of the "similar" abilities enable an esper to change the _state of matter_ of the element while still controlling it either. She has been able to not only control existing water, but form it out of vapor in the air, or through a direct mixture of hydrogen and oxygen (provided via tanks in an otherwise sealed environment). She can then change that water from a gas, to a solid, or to liquid without any apparent effort. She can use these substances to create other objects as well.

She is even to manipulate the actual properties of hydrogen itself: she created objects from solid hydrogen, used liquid hydrogen as a coolant and for show, and despite mass spectrometry confirming that the objects created _were_ pure hydrogen, they were completely stable. As you should know, hydrogen, in its natural state, is _extremely_ volatile: simply touching solid hydrogen would cause it to explode, and hydrogen burns at normal room temperature.

Yet she is able to upend this on its head entirely. She created stable "clubs", utensils, tools, even minor sculpture, none of which burned or exploded until she "released" it from her control.

She claims that it's as natural to her as curling her hands…

**[REDACTED]**

She states that she is able to use water under her "influence" as a sensory organ. She demonstrates genuine extrasensory perception when she "extends her influence" over water or hydrogen in an area.

In a pitch black environment, she was able to find fifteen volunteers and six staff members in a test in a labyrinth in under eleven minutes. We verified she had no actual sight, but she claimed to have "felt" them. She then repeated these results eighteen times in a row with no deviation. She was even able to find specific targets while evading pursuers and traps.

This does correspond to her earlier demonstrations at hospitals through the city and her public, official work in North America. By using customized thoughtography software, she created extremely detailed 3D scans of patients that far exceeded anything obtainable via ultrasound, MRI, or related technology.

At the same time, she was able to provide detailed diagnostic information, from blood pressure, cell composition, bone density, and so on, without ever having to come into physical contact with a patient.

In order words, despite her claims that she can't control hydrogen compounds that are within a living creature, she can certainly "read" them. Yet she has confirmed that she is able to regulate her own body temperature and chemistry, so it is clearly not a limitation of Hydrogen Diktat itself.

I highly suspect that her "inability" to control the moisture and liquids within a human being or animal is related to her own psychological inhibitions against causing harm. An inhibition that I, again, must insist is false, given the Clear Springs and Nellis Incidents.

I have absolutely no doubt that she could easily exceed Mental Out if she were to put any effort into it. She has a far greater range of effect, her ability is more malleable, and she is only a step away from gaining the experience necessary to begin reading minds using it; from there, manipulating them is child's play.

Given her high-handed morality and overall intelligence, she will eventually discover the dark side of Academy City, and will, with 98.529% probability, begin to actively fight it in all forms. All this makes her an extreme threat the moment she decides to turn against the City.

As such, I again request the immediate termination of Hydrogen Diktat.

**STATUS PENDING REVIEW BY BOARD CHAIRMAN**

_I told you it was a bad idea to bring her here, Suco. ~Left Hand_


	6. School Shorts 2 - First Day

**First Day of School for a Talented Teenager**

School Shorts #2: With Running Commentary

"Oneeeeeeeeeeeeeee-samaaaaaaaaaaaaaa," whined a twintailed brunette. "Why are we here again?"

"It's her first day of school and the first time introducing herself to a class," Misaka Mikoto answered. "I just wanted to give her some moral support, that's all—what? What's that look for?!"

"Onee-sama." Kuroko's voice was thick with suspicion. "Are you sure it's not because it gives you a chance to be with _that creature_?"

"Of course not," Mikoto responded quickly. Shirai Kuroko turned the simple phrase into a curse and a hiss, and Leif, resting on Mikoto's shoulder and partially wrapped around her neck, slowly blinked his green eyes.

_I'm closer than you'll ever be, nya-nya-nyaaaan~_

"(Your days are numbered, you homewrecking felid.)"

Leif batted at Kuroko, who promptly hid on the other side of Mikoto. There were two reasons for that: one, it kept her out of range of Leif—who was 7 for 7 against Kuroko—and two, it gave her an excuse to press herself against Mikoto. The Ace of Tokiwadai focused on the fluff of the cat and ignored the thick, smog-like black clouds forming around her kouhai.

The one benefit of Mikoto's unnatural attachment to that evil feline was that, when playing with him, the Railgun was more willing to deal with Kuroko's overwhelming style of "skinship". It should be noted that this was only because she was so occupied with fluffing the dog-sized feline that she became unable to notice all but the most egregious assaults from her roommate.

"Oh, she's going up for her introduction," Mikoto noted. Kuroko moved warily, not releasing the arm she'd confiscated, so she could get a proper view of the classroom.

"Hopefully she sticks to that whole 'cool beauty' persona she had," Kuroko muttered.

"Mmm. Well, I told her to try to act a little more natural so she'll be more approachable, so—oh god." Mikoto's jaw dropped at the same time as Kuroko's.

"Did she just…"

Mikoto groaned. Kuroko buried her face in Mikoto's shoulder, denying what she'd just seen. Her hands clenched her onee-sama's arm, halting on their journey towards another part of Mikoto's anatomy. The scene was that utterly stupefying.

"Onee-sama, did she just do a courtly bow?"

"_Rowwrl…_" Batting at the ribbons in Kuroko's hair forced a retreat, complete with a vengeful glare. He ceased his assault once she looked up, however—it seemed that he only wished to share the agony.

"She did."

"…I thought you taught her how to bow like a proper Japanese?"

"I did! And she nailed it! It may have been a little salaryman-ish, but I told her that was fine for a foreigner!"

"It would have worked, I agree. Maybe trying to 'act natural' put too much pressure on her?"

"_Mrrrrrwl._" _Yeah, pretty much._

Connie Battuta had lived most of her life isolated from anyone who could be called a peer. She had spent no small amount of time with older people, or with young children who had no idea that they should fear her. This resulted in some extreme behavioral discrepancies.

She could present a thesis in front of an audience of ten thousand specialists and researchers with crisp professionalism. On the other side of the age scale, she'd caused a small scandal when she had brought a number of children into the School Garden to raid sweet shops.

She was blissfully unaware of how that enamored her to the latent maternal instincts and feminine sensibilities shared by most of the population of the Garden, although that's a different tale.

She could _not_, however, understand how to act in front of people like the third year middle schoolers that made up her homeroom. While she was older than they were, their age was far closer than she was used to. Her anxiety in that situation was so severe that she had defaulted to extremely rigid mannerisms when introduced to several of Mikoto's friends, revealing that it wasn't the size of the audience that caused problems.

She immediately received a lecture from the Tokiwadai girls about how such extremely polite speech and behavior ended up making her seem aloof, or even that she was deliberately trying to act cold and distant.

Even Kuroko, concerned—and not at all overcome with jealousy—about how strong the bonds Connie and Mikoto had formed so quickly, felt pity for her. There is, after all, nothing quite like realizing the flaws of a perceived rival to improve one's mood.

Not that the twintailed girl would ever be willing to acknowledge that fact.

"Well, at least Kuomoto-sensei isn't calling her on it."

"Why would she, Onee-sama? I'm no fan of Battuta-san, but I'm well aware of how valuable her enrollment is. Anything that would cause her to reconsider Tokiwadai would be avoide—"

Her words died in her throat, accompanied by a grinding noise like a car hitting a highway barrier. Mikoto's shoulders sagged, and the Maine Coon let out a pitiful howl, turning away in shame.

"Kuomoto-sensei slipped—"

"—well, at least Battuta-san was there to catch her—"

"—with a princess carry? How strong _is_ she, they're almost the same size…"

"I don't think I've ever seen the air turn that pink before. (At least not when you're not the focus, Onee-sama…)"

"Huh? What did you—did she just twirl to set her down?"

"At least it looked Olympian…" _It would have fit in well at the Winter Games_ went unvoiced.

Leif let out an anguished cry, begging for it to end.

"Well… it's just one class, right?" Mikoto was half asking, half pleading.

"Y-yes. Yes! We can help her make sure to avoid making such a spectacle in the next one. She's mostly in fine arts classes today, right? Perhaps the teachers will be kind enough to avoid requesting a traditional introduction."

"Right! Right! Especially the strings teacher, she won't let anything delay her lessons."

"Yes! Exactly, Guilean-sensei is far too strict to allow her time to be wast—oh no."

"…"

"She…"

"It's like watching an accident in slow motion… I want to look away but I _just can't_." Mikoto whimpered, eyes locked on the spectacle. "She's… I can't... just. _Why_ Connie?" That last bit came out in a pained whimper.

"There's so many pink hearts floating in there…"

"You're exaggerating, right? We're not seeing the same sort of illusion or anything? Maybe we're just dehydrated. Yeah, yeah that's it…" Mikoto continued coming up with plausible explanations, attempting to build a shield of rationality for her mind.

"This class is almost over, right?" Kuroko was tentatively hopeful.

That gave Mikoto an excuse to check her phone, not that she needed to. In desperation she made a production of it, trying to eat up as much time as possible.

"Err… it's been eight minutes."

"We should probably just leave that beast here and go to our own classes."

"Yeah, you're right. About that second part, at least." Leif was unable to even defend himself, seemingly paralyzed by his master's inability to function as a normal student. Well, he was also a cat, so it was perfectly plausible that he didn't notice Kuroko's insult, although she would find him having confiscated her pillow that night, which was an unusually bold strike.

"…"

"…"

Neither of them budged, transfixed as the new girl was swarmed by not only the students at her desk, but the teacher as well. Mikoto hoped that she might be trying to break up the crowd, but that hope was dashed when she saw how flushed Kuomoto-sensei's face was.

"…"

"I really didn't think this school could turn into _more_ of a collection of shoujo manga tropes, but here we are."

"I'm just shocked at the infidelity of the student body. (Although, another part of me is glad that I might have Onee-sama more to myself than ever now…)"

"Ehh? It never got _that_ bad for me, right?"

Kuroko thought on it, tapping her chin before answering. "Well, no, she's much worse off. It must be the novelty of a foreigner or something. Or the student body simply has no taste—oh. They're tackling her."

"Well, um… things can only get better from here, right?"

"Y-yes! It's just a rough start, we can definitely help her—oh no."

"…I can see third-year girls _swooning_."

A panicked Connie tried to deduce why the girls around her were so flushed. When she started trying to check their temperatures by forehead contact, the Railgun finally collapsed to her knees, burying her face in her hands. Girls began to drop like flies on the other side of the soundproofed glass.

At that, Leif let out a final roar of despair and leapt from Mikoto's shoulders. Instead of going to rescue his master however, he bolted down the hall and vanished around the corner.

"(Suddenly, I have some respect for that creature,)" Kuroko muttered.

_Well, he had the courage to abandon a sinking ship_, Mikoto thought cruelly. Given that she wasn't the real victim here, it was arguably a little unfair, but it was still painful to watch her friend digging herself deeper and deeper.

Really, all three girls were very much the type to suffer in silence than share their pain with others. In this specific case, however, they were all experiencing the same pain from different perspectives.

"Kuroko, just… just tell me when it's over."

"Kuroko shall do her utmost, Onee-sama," her kouhai responded grimly. She was forcing herself to continue watching, considering it practice for investigating a spectacularly gory murder scene. Strangely, that thought was calming. At least a murder scene implied that the victim could no longer suffer. It would have been a comparative mercy.

The day only got much, much, much worse for the foreign transfer student. Her dumbstruck observers never had a chance to pull her out, as she was shuffled along in veritable waves of ecstatic middle schoolers from one class to another.

Each event contributed only further to her reputation; even the strings professor had clapped her hands with stars in her eyes at seeing Connie's familiarity with more traditional instruments, gushing praise in French loudly enough to be heard in the hall. Saving girls from falls resulted in wall-slams; missing items were found; feuding friends were reconciled... it continued on, Connie effortlessly setting every possible flag in her relationships, albeit she was completely unaware of it.

After a certain point, Mikoto and Kuroko's minds blanked out, their brains taking the nuclear option to preserve their sanity... and what respect remained towards Connie.

This continued well past lunch and by the end of the day, both Mikoto and Kuroko were depleted, shuffling through the halls after the mob that was half-carrying the new girl. A brief glimpse at their eyes would betray the attempt of their souls to escape. Leif remained missing and Connie was surrounded by girls who barely came up to her shoulders, keeping her fully contained and wearing down what little stamina she still had. She was starting to sway, almost imperceptibly, when a spark of inspiration lit up Mikoto's mind. It was like a spotlight arriving just as the last match started to go out while trapped in a cavern. With alacrity that she had not shown in hours, she drew her phone…

…And then she called Connie, telling her to flee using the excuse of a prior appointment. It was, in other words, the classic escape call, although none of these girls realized it. It was a common technique in the dating world which, to be clear, absolutely none of them had any experience with.

So Mikoto's subsequent back-patting of herself could be forgiven in light of that ignorance. While Connie would eventually recognize the trick, her gratitude required that she turn away from that fact.

Regardless of the origin of that technique, Connie at last managed to get away from her adoring fans and staggered over to Mikoto and Kuroko. She was still wearing a lovely smile as she did so: any American would have recognized it as a very Midwestern, polite, "get me the hell out of here" kind of smile. The gushing girls, however, lacked the familiarity or cultural knowledge to recognize it as such, and so it only added to her appeal.

Mikoto just nodded, jerkingly, mechanically moving to take Connie by the hand and leading her away, while Kuroko managed to keep the crowd at bay long enough for them to escape. The still-growing crowd of admiring, now disappointed, girls mistook Connie's tears as those of happiness, and the ruddiness of her skin as a healthy glow.

As soon as they were out of sight, they ratcheted up to max speed, turning into indistinct blurs. Some would later say that wailing, in English, could be heard as never-before-seen poltergeists streaked by…

And of course, that led only to another legend being born.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

Oh, Connie...

So, fun fact (well, fun to me), in her earliest iteration, Connie really _was_ supposed to come across as the "cool beauty" or "kuudere" type. That was a radically different kind of story and background for her (although some parts of it have remained), but that aspect of her has largely vanished from her personal relationships. I wanted to try and get across how she appears to strangers though, which led to the idea of going through her first day of school since elementary.

I tried a few different methods to show this day of her life, but the problem is that so much of it was physical humor that it was hard to figure out how to describe it without wearing out the reader (or me). Then I realized that, given that Mikoto basically never goes to class (not really, but it sure seems like she shouldn't have much of a better attendance record than a certain spiky-haired boy), why wouldn't she be checking out her new friend's first day of class?

And thus, here we are! I personally find this a lot more amusing, so I tried to keep the details vague; I'm willing to bet that most of what you can think of is probably funnier than I can write.

Also, wow, this is one of several short stories so far that were _really_ easy to write, and _really_ hard to edit.

Thanks again for the reviews/favorites; it's definitely a major factor in reminding me that I want to do this and someone else actually enjoys it! Although I'm a little annoyed that I missed my self-imposed weekly deadline by a day... Hmph.


	7. School Shorts 3 - After Action Report

**After Action Review**

School Shorts #3: It's like a safety blanket

"So, shall we review what you did wrong?"

"Please…" Connie's voice was usually firm and calming, a little deeper than the typical Japanese girl's, while distinctly feminine, almost maternal. At this exact moment, however, her voice was dry and husky, muffled as if she was already in the grave. Which, given how exhausted she appeared, was not far from the truth.

They were in a smaller café near the edge of the School Garden. It had taken them nearly three hours to navigate there after the buzz that Connie had generated in the last few days. It had been so extreme that even Mikoto had been able to freely move through the Garden, with no-one sparing a glance for the #3.

It was really quite relaxing, actually, Mikoto thought as Kuroko pulled out several binders: papers overflowed, which was an unusual site in Academy City. However, a number of them were apparently Judgement reports—or copies of Anti-Skill reports sent to Judgement—and there were strict rules regarding such records and the systems they could be on.

Well, relaxing for her: it was a nice change of pace from having to deal with strangers that would approach upon recognizing her, especially when she was alone. On top of that, she had found a new toy for Leif, who was rolling about on the table attacking a string of light-brown hair she was twirling about. The twintailed girl who that hair belonged to would have protested, but it gave Kuroko an excuse to be pressed up against Mikoto, as well as having the older girl messing with her hair.

Combined with being the official archivist, which enabled her to place herself between Mikoto and Connie without protest, it was an almost perfect win-win situation. Aside from the neck pain that came from having to keep her head tilted and occasionally pulled. In fact, it had gotten so severe after the last half-hour that she finally had to admit defeat and reclaim her hair, cracking her neck.

Leif wanted to keep playing, leaping at Kuroko's head as she tried to get feeling back in her neck by rolling her head. Mikoto ended up moving to the other side of the round booth, luring him over with snacks from the staff. He had already won the hearts of the young women running the restaurant the first time she had brought him there. After he was thoroughly distracted, and checking that Connie was still hiding and Kuroko was getting her reports ready, Mikoto immediately plunged face-first into the fluff, completely ignorant of how loud her giddy giggling was. Leif tolerated the tickling and bellyrubbing, while trying to groom the irritatingly sparky-and-staticky girl the best he could.

_Well, it was still worth it_, the youngest girl thought happily, basking in the afterglow, ignoring the creaking and crack as she attempted to turn her head. If a certain older girl had been in a better state, she would have been up in arms about a thirteen-year-old's neck making sounds like that, but she was effectively out of commission.

Specifically, Connie had her face planted on the table, flannel covering her head, her hands inside and pinning it down. It looked a little like a blue-green tent had been setup. The pained whines prevented any illusion of a happy camping practice.

Part of the issue had been moving across the Garden on a spectacularly humid day. According to Connie, high humidity tended to overwhelm her ability's passive tendency to track hydrogen compounds. When Kuroko and Mikoto had glanced at each other, unsure what that meant, she had attempted to elaborate between sighs and groans.

Connie attempted to explain this aspect of her ability as being similar to watching an analog TV—not knowing that the younger girls had little personal knowledge of such things. They had enough experience with technology in general to compensate, and were more than intelligent enough to parse through her groggy explanation.

Hydrogen Diktat encompassed a number of applications, some of which were completely autonomous and others that required Connie's deliberate focus. A semi-passive aspect of her ability enabled her to build up a detailed image of the world around her. She saw most of the world in general vague shapes, giving the most attention to people and animals, allowing them to appear crisp and clear. The clarity of these objects and individuals was heavily dictated by the amount of hydrogen present in, on, and around them—which, in normal situations, referred to water and the multitude of related mixtures that made life on Earth possible.

It was similar in function to sonar or radar, albeit it returned far more information than just outlined shapes and objects. For Connie, it was created using a subconscious _pulse that read the properties of water around her_, rather than sound or radio waves being bounced off the environment itself.

Kuroko herself had no experience with an ability like that: while her form of teleportation required eleventh-dimensional calculations, it didn't require—or enable—her to be aware of the properties past the third-dimension. A significant chunk of time ended up being spent on trying to explain it to her as a result.

On the other hand, Misaka Mikoto had a clearer idea of what she was talking about: she could do something similar by expanding the electromagnetic field that she unconsciously emitted, allowing her to build up a general image and view of the world around her. Effectively Mikoto turned herself into a humanoid radar by bouncing electromagnetic waves around, as well as gathering information from them passively. Connie accomplished something vaguely similar, although it operated on a radically different principle. It sounded like Connie's wasn't something she could readily turn on and off, which was the primary difference as far as utility went.

"I think I technically could," she replied as they snuck through alleys and deserted side streets. "If I try to suppress it too much, it feels like I'm covering my eyes or plugging my ears while holding my breath. I'm stuck either half-drowning in data or practicing self-asphyxiation."

On the other hand, she could build images of the world around her without using any of the traditional senses at all, and could even _print those images_ with the right tech available. Those images, from what Mikoto had seen, ranged from basic, cheap-camera-level quality, to hyper-high-definition that would rival a spy satellite's clarity.

When there was a great deal of water vapor in the air—such as days like this with high humidity—the television signal was swamped, covering the image in static. She could still see things beneath it, but it took a great deal more effort and energy to refine it, and her resolution everywhere else would begin to drop.

It meant she had to constantly be shifting her attention, attempting to multitask while taking in a _veritable deluge of data_. The human brain, of course, wasn't capable of _true multitasking_ on a conscious level, so it meant she had to keep shifting focus frequently to avoid having the screen flooded in static. Although Connie hypothesized that her brain could manage it, it wouldn't do so if she didn't allocate her full mind to it. The other girls considered to be the result of her ignorance of the function of her own ability. She was an esper from outside Academy City, so it wouldn't surprise them to see that, as talented as Connie was, she didn't understand the limits of her own ability.

The Tokiwadai espers understood part of the explanation, as it effectively boiled down to Connie being overwhelmed by data that she couldn't filter out. If she attempted to do so, she stopped being able to "see" what she actually wanted as well.

"…Yeah I guess that's a simpler explanation," she acknowledged after some back and forth to clarify her explanation. At that point she had finally loosened her flannel from her waist and hid under it, leaving her ignorant of the concern flashing between the younger girls.

"I can't imagine that Shokuhou Misaki is going to be happy about the number of admirers," Kuroko observed sometime later, after they were served, "but I'm sure that'll take care of itself."

"Probably sooner than you think," Mikoto grumbled. Her expression was dark, despite being grateful that Shokuhou hadn't realized she had befriended Connie yet; earlier that week, she had tried another "prank" that come close to a hyper-aggressive power-play. The same issues that plagued any middle school in the world still existed at Tokiwadai. They just tended to be a little subtler. Usually.

Unfortunately for the rest of Academy City, if not the world, teenage rivalries and pranks grew exponentially more dangerous when ability users were involved. And when the espers in question were both Level 5s... well, there was a reason that Mikoto did her best to avoid her and keep the people precious to her far away at the same time.

As far as she was aware, Shokuhou had no concept of "friends", only "enemies" and "minions".

"So, let's just pretend we're already over your _elaborate_ and idiotic public display of your ability at the gates." The blue-green blob trembled. "We're also going to pretend that the incident dealing with _those things_ didn't happen, because thankfully nobody in the Garden wants to talk about the natural enemy of mankind."

"Gckgh!"

"Connie, did you just swallow your tongue?"

"N-no…" came the meek reply. The blue-green mass was unnervingly still.

"So, that just leaves dealing with the flowerbed fire, where you managed to extinguish it without even a damaged petal," Kuroko continued, still in a pink-haze, completely ignorant of the damage she was inflicting. "Then there was the track and field practice, where you even managed to humiliate Onee-sama."

"It wasn't humiliating, it was humbling," Mikoto protested over another cry. "Besides, I prefer swimming, but she was right: I should aim to be more-well-rounded."

"Just because you forgive her Onee-sama, doesn't mean I have to. Besides that, she also defeated every single member of the _actual_ track club except for the captain with her friction modification ability."

"I didn't know we could use abilities…"

"Which only _increased_ the buzz when people realized that you weren't using yours! I still don't know how that's _humanly possible_!"

A pained, choking sob came from beneath the green-blue flannel.

"After that, we, of course, had the 'knightly and princely introductions' that somehow happened in no fewer than _eight_ of your fourteen classes. The hour you spent in your first classical strings class fixing not only your own loaner violin, but the instruments of _every other student_, to the point where they _all_ sounded objectively better, no longer left splinters, and so on.

"Which caused the instructor, one of the most notoriously vicious and hardshelled teachers in Tokiwadai, to _gush your praises_ to everyone who would listen."

"I think that was because of the hydro-massage I offered."

"Okay, now _why the hell did you do that?!_" Just thinking about it was enough finally snap Kuroko out of her happy daze, standing up and shouting at the quivering bulge of blue-green.

"She was clearly suffering severe lumbar pain! I just insisted that she let me try to resolve it. I have the knowledge to treat that; I couldn't _ignore_ it!"

"You forcibly laid her down on her desk after pushing everything off of it, massaged her, and caused an expression to appear on her face that will haunt me for the rest of my life." _Although I'd love to see that on—no, no, not the time Kuroko!_

"It wasn't _that_ bad!"

"No, it really was," Mikoto confirmed, shuddering, hoping that it concealed the heat rushing up her neck. She _was_ a healthy fourteen-year-old girl, after all. Seeing something like _that _would generally cause a reaction from anyone with even a hint of self-awareness.

Although that didn't explain why she thought someone hiding underneath her clothes would notice the rising blush.

"She's been in such a good mood the last two days that none of her classes can actually focus," Kuroko said with a trembling voice, her eyes growing distant. "We're all waiting for the moment when the beast returns."

"It won't if she just follows the exercise regimen I gave her!"

"For the love of—are you a physical therapist too?!"

"Only as a hobby…"

"…"

"…"

"…"

"You had way too much free time before coming here, didn't you?"

"…Yes." Never before in history had an overaccomplished sixteen-year-old's voice been filled with so much shame.

"I understand that cultural values can differ greatly, especially across an expanse as great as the Pacific Ocean." Kuroko sighed and rubbed her temples with both pointer fingers, sighing like an overworked guidance counselor. "But I have a great deal of difficulty believing that this sort of behavior would be the norm in American schools."

"Well, I wouldn't know about that… I haven't been to a school lower than university since I was five."

"…Huh?"

"D-don't worry about it, Kuroko," Mikoto quckly cut off. Connie hadn't explained her full circumstances to everyone yet, apparently due to a warning from the Chairwoman. Mikoto had even been called in to ask her to stay quiet as well.

Connie still intended to share her history, but she was trying to wait until she had been able to establish a routine, or any sort of normality.

Unfortunately for her, her own actions over the past week had eradicated any chance of that happening soon.

"Well… if you say so, Onee-sama." Kuroko's glance in Mikoto's direction made it clear that she wasn't going to exactly drop it, but she'd let it rest for now. "So, continuing on from here…"

"Ugh-ggaaaah…"

"You have no-one to blame but yourself, Batutta-san."

"Shouldn't it be 'senpai'?!"

"I can't even manage that as a formality at this point," the young teleporter flatly snapped.

"Grrrk!" The blue-green hill shuddered and trembled, having taken a critical hit! Smoke and steam rose from beneath the flannel, even seeping out from the fabric!

"K-Kuroko, she's down! Hold your fire!"

"Well, too bad, we're not even halfway through."

"I don't think—"

"No, no, Mikoto-san… let her finish. This is important." Somehow the oldest girl was still managing to hang on, despite being at -1 HP.

"(I still can't believe she has the gall! To be so casual with Onee-sama…)"

"I heard that one, Kuroko."

"So did I, Shirai."

Kuroko coughed, shielding herself with the bundle of papers. "Well, anyway…"

The list went on and on: she had rescued several lost children, taken Child Errors from Asunaro Park on a tour of School Garden sweet shops, actually retrieved numerous pets from trees (including Kongou Mitsuko's python, somehow), interfered with several fights, rescued numerous young girls from harassment encounters, saved a favorite traditional shop from bankruptcy through a new business strategy, convinced a number of Skill-Out members to return to school, reunited a set of long-lost identical triplets, rescued and carried (bridal-style, of course) no fewer than twenty-three girls from falls, restored four broken friendships, found an antique jeweled pendant that was the priceless heirloom for a foreign nation's princess…

Kuroko was reading off the printed events, half of them Judgement reports, placing the finished ones onto a pile on the table. As Leif was busy grooming and wanted no outside help, Mikoto started going through them as well.

"…I'm honestly confused as to _how you had the time for all of this._ And this is all _ignoring_ the rumors that Saten-san keeps finding that are _probably_ about you."

"I'm sorry, Connie-san, but I have to agree with her on this too. _How?_"

"I never had a chance to run around and actually… _do_ things on my own. Apparently this is what happens if I just meander…"

"I thought you didn't like fighting," Mikoto asked, remembering Connie complaining about one of the poorer results from her practical exams. "How do you keep breaking up these things?" There were at least six different fights she'd interrupted, literally knocking people out or sealing them into a strange pseudo-ice, usually trying to flee—poorly—when Anti-Skill or Judgement arrived.

"I dunno. I just sort of walk into them, people get angry at me, and I let them hurt themselves. I don't tend to throw any punches or the like."

"Why don't you just use your ability?"

"Maybe she's not as reckless and fond of flouting the rules as you are, Onee-sama," Kuroko suggested, reviewing what they had covered so far.

"Kuroko!" The fact that her kouhai was absolutely correct only made it hurt more.

"I don't like using my ability like that. I'm still… very uncomfortable with it." There was a slurp as she managed to drain yet another cup of a dark, fizzy drink. "Hell, I feel like a creep just letting it scan the people around me, but Aniki and the Chairwoman both have lectured me about getting over that."

"You really do," Mikoto confirmed, warning in her voice. "Even if you can get through all this stuff without it, well…" She trailed off. She'd almost started revealing what had caused her to reassess how to use her own ability, but Kuroko was still unaware of the truth of that time.

_Why would I feel like it's appropriate to bring that up to Connie, though?_ Mikoto wondered. While it was mostly driven by jealousy, Kuroko's claim that she had started trusting the American unusually quickly wasn't completely wrong.

"Triplets? Really?" Kuroko's flabbergasted question interrupted her thoughts.

"_That's_ what you take the most issue with?!"

"It was some wacky experiment, apparently…"

"I wish I could say that's ridiculous, but I know this city too well for that," Kuroko said, shaking her head.

"Yeah, tell me about it," Mikoto gave a mirthless chuckle. "We still have to catch you up on what _we've_ been up to—_wait!_ That shop was _Kendei_'s?!" Mikoto exclaimed, jumping up and shaking the older girl, ignoring the startled yelp. If there had been any lingering thought of darker issues, they had been blown away by the urgency of this revelation. "I can't believe it, how were they about to close?!"

"I think it was because they weren't making very smart purchases. But since we have the busybody right here, Battuta-san? Care to elaborate?"

"Is it that big a deal…?"

"Yes!" both girls snapped. The little blue-green hill trembled more, only now gaining an appreciation of what that particular sweets shop meant to the population of the Garden.

"She just wasn't shopping for proper supplies, and she kept going to the same suppliers who were scamming her. Something like a 500% upcharge, it was ridiculous. Plus they just need to refurb the furnishings and update the menu a bit. There's a British master chef who could've done all that that a lot easier."

"I don't think she could have dealt with the abuse that would have required."

"Well, true…"

In the time it took to discuss ninety-percent of her antics, they had been served an early supper and several rounds of tea, Connie was having trouble adjusting to given her long dependence on soft drinks. That was without the added difficulty of refusing to leave the safety of her flannel cave, as well, but she had someone managed it.

Mikoto had the image of an anteater or elephant simply sucking up everything it could…

While Leif was finishing off his own meal, whose price Connie would have protested if she'd seen it, the younger girls managed to reach a conclusion.

"Yes, I think our original assessment is correct, Onee-sama," Kuroko confirmed, teleporting over to her. They had put their heads together, looking at the final sheet during a final, whispered consultation.

"I have to agree, Kuroko," Mikoto grimly replied.

"Well, it's—_kyaaaaak! _You vile beast!" Kuroko screeched. She'd started shaking her head, which of course shook her tails, which immediately drew Leif's attention. The apex predator of the restaurant had immediately pounced. Whatever she had been about to say was lost in the subsequent brawl.

"Which is? What do you think?" Connie pleaded, hope clear in her voice.

"You're screwed," the Asian girls told her, one having to half-shout it. She collapsed into tears. The cloth-sloth slid over and wrapped her arms around Mikoto as she did so, wondering aloud how she'd gone so wrong.

Part of Mikoto wanted to tell her the story of a certain spiky-haired idiot whose desire to help anyone and everyone got him caught up in _far bigger_ problems, but it wasn't the time or place for that.

Especially since she'd have to share _how_ she knew his proclivity for getting into trouble so well…

_I don't feel like her emotional maturity has caught up to her physical age yet_, Mikoto rudely, if affectionately, thought while rubbing her back as Connie embraced her. She ignored the black clouds and dimensional rifts on the other side of the table, where Leif was in a standoff with her roommate after being separated by staff.

"So, uh, Connie-san?" Mikoto prompted, ignoring the angry glares from the waitresses. The quiet, relaxing atmosphere the staff cultivated had been on a knife's edge for most of the last few hours, but now it had tottered over into a three-person (and one cat) bedlam.

"_Sob… _Y-yeah?" the flannel-covered girl managed to get out between sniffs.

"You're going to have a roommate soon, right? You're moving into the dorm on-campus, aren't you?"

"Oh… yeah, that's true. Think there's a chance for a fresh start? …Mikoto-san? Mikoto-san? Mikoto-san, I can _feel_ that you're not looking at me even without using my ability…"

"U-um… well, maybe they don't pay attention to rumors? Or they could be a shut-in!" The needle of hope that Mikoto managed to find jabbed straight into Connie, who seemed to deflate even further, collapsing onto the booth seat.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

This really was meant to go up last week, but uh, life sorta kicked my ass. Sorry about that! Ideally I can get another update out this week, despite _Trails of Cold Steel III_ releasing in about 25 minutes. I have plenty of chapters and short stories _ready_, but I need to verify them in editing and proofreading... and some of them are already scrapped for not being good enough or revealing way more than I'd like.

But hey, I can finally see the end of the "School Shorts" stories, at least as far as it goes before getting into Connie's "true arc"! It helps that I finalized the timeline, and realized that having to tell _every single story_ before that isn't really a good idea.

Odds are that the next update will include another "out of context" report/infodump, or I'll finally start showing a bit of what a certain telepath is experiencing... Just a matter of deciding which really works there.


End file.
